TA Performance Stage 1 Aluminum Cylinder Head
This is a new cylinder head, just released by TA Performance. The following is a photo evaluation, and comparison to a set of competition ported 430 cylinder heads, that flow over 300 cfm on the intakes, and 212 on the exhausts. I chose this set of heads to compare the new ones with, in photos, to give the viewer and idea of what advances have been made, in the area of "out of the box" performance, port sizing, and runner configurations, compared to a very expensive set of fully ported heads. These 430 iron heads have $1800 worth of port work done to them, not including the rebuild and Stage 1 conversion costs, and the parts. Figure nearly $3200 to build yourself a set of these iron heads, from good, hard to find cores.
The aluminum heads will cost considerably less, not to mention they weight 1/2 what the irons do..
This level of cylinder head will support 700 HP, so the vast majority of the folks interested in these heads, will need no more than just a good valve job, which will provide them with heads sufficient to support 500+ HP low compression street engines, or 600+ HP race motors. For reference, our last level 2 street engine, which produced 563 TQ, and 532 HP, wore iron cylinder heads that flowed 270 cfm on the intake, and 194 on the exhaust. That's "out of the box" performance for these new heads.
So, let's have a look...
These Heads also come with the extra 4 bolt holes, although the holes are not drilled all the way thru. The extra holes are need only for High Compression racing applications, and if your going that route, it is a very easy matter, to simply chuck up a 3/8 drill bit in a hand drill, and drill the rest of the hole out. You have about 3 inches of pre-drilled hole, to guide the drill bit. .. Nice.. and it shows the thought process, and planning, that went into this new product. For those of us who buy regularly from TA Performance, we have come to expect no less, and they deliver once again.
So now you have a good general view, of how they come, out of the box.
On the next page, we will look at the bowl areas, and compare them to my expensive race heads.