double the valves, keep your stock pistons cam and pushrods

philly

philly

solid fixture here in the forum
once upon a time there was a company called dominion who made 32v heads for ford small blocks (thats what i knew them for anyway) and they came up in conversation the other day and i decided to look them up. now going by the name ARAO engineering, they offer 32v heads for ford, chevy (big and small and lsx) and 16v heads for air cooled volkswagen (dorian?)

check em out

http://www.araoengineering.com/chevybb.htm

big block chevy

32v heads for the Big Block Chevy 502 cu in 4.5” bore and larger, standard 4.840” bore centers. Uses standard head bolt locations, standard performance cams, pistons, exhaust headers, and accessory holes in ends of heads. Mounted on 4.5” bore block. Note: Height of intake port that is located on bore centers. Custom sheet metal intake manifold is necessary. No compromise in port flow here. Note: Water ports in front of heads, water to be collected and returned back to radiator. Use external thermostat housing as used in conjunction with some brands of blower manifolds.

the small ford ones are most impressive, even stock head gaskets can be used because all the coolant passages are the same. real bolt on stuff..


granted they cost about as much as a supercharger setup, but in my opinion they are WAY more trick than having a blower on your motor
 
Re: double the valves, keep your stock pistons cam and pushr

I tried very hard at one time,several years back to get detailed info from those guys, and the heads they sell, and I wanted to find at least 3-5 people that had previously purchased and used those heads on a BIG BLOCK CHEVY ENGINE to get some real world feed back, and some idea as to any difficulty's installing and maintaining those heads, and the durability, seems rather suspect. as I found only two people in all that time at car shows using them. IT seems sales and possibly durability is lacking or they sell very few sets as in the last few years Ive visited many car shows, and asked several dozen experienced guys and have either found that no ones ever seen a running engine built with them, or the results they say were not nearly as good as the owner expected. I suspect that at $10K a set, they don,t see many sales and those they do see are not being raced or dyno tested.while its true that youll see the serious racers ,guys who build all out engines ,spend $10 k on race prepped heads the 4 valve heads are not legal to use in some classes so I suspect that also hurts sales.
yeah! I'd love to have a set, but after I asked for a few references of previous customers they stopped answering e-mail and my questions.
that was back in jan. 2001, then again in SEPT.2001



PAUL,
MY APOLOGIES, ARE IN NEED HERE . I HAD ALOT GOING ON THIS
WEEK.ACTUALLY EVERY BODY DID!I HAVE MOST OF THE INFO. READY FOR YOU . I AM
WAITING HOW EVER FOR OUR NEWEST IN CAR DYNO TEST RESULTS TO GET HERE.I KNOW
THEY PRODUCED ABOUT 600H.P TO THE REAR WHEELS WITH AN EVERYDAY DECENT STREET
MOTOR IN AN ALL STEEL 1956 CHEVY STEPSIDE TUCK .SO I DO APOLOGIZE FOR THE
DELAY.I HAVE ADDED CHEVYTALK TO OUR LINKS PAGE AND I'VE TAKEN SOME TIME TO
READ SOME OF THEIR FORUM CHATS AND WAS VERY HAPPY WITH SOME INFO I WAS ABLE
TO FIND . I ALSO WANTED TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR INSIGHT ABOUT OUR 32valve
HEADS. I WILL GET THAT MAILED OUT THIS WEEK.


THANKS ALOT,

DAVEB

(ARAO ENGINEERING)




----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Langevin" <prlangevin@hotmail.com>
To: <highrs@pacbell.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:37 AM
Subject: Re: ARAO ENGINEERING's 32VALVE HEADS


>
>
>
> >From: daveb <highrs@pacbell.net>
> >To: Paul Langevin <prlangevin@hotmail.com>
> >Subject: ARAO ENGINEERING's 32VALVE HEADS
> >Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2001 21:49:31 -0700
> >
> >
> DEAR PAUL,
> >
> >I AM WORKING ON A COMPLETE INFO PACKAGE FOR YOU AS WE
> >SPEAK. I SHOULD HAVE IT READY FOR YOU ON MONDAY, TUESDAY AT THE LATEST !
>
>
> (have you sent the info yet???) (have you added the link on the board yet)
> GRUMPYVETTE/PAUL



BTW AS I STATED ONCE I ASKED FOR A LIST OF PREVIOUS CUSTOMERS CORRESPONDENCE STOPPED
 
Re: double the valves, keep your stock pistons cam and pushr

thats unfortunate... as i recall steve turner (who once was (maybe still is?) the editor of 5.0 mustang magazine) had a set and had nothing but positive things to say about the small block ford application... however i dd see in their description for big block chevy you have to run inline external thermostats and that has its own inconvenience attached... maybe the SBF stuff is just much better sorted out because its more than 20 years running.
 
Re: double the valves, keep your stock pistons cam and pushr

also totally understand where you are coming from when you talk about a niche market, since most racers cant use these heads in class racing that means most of their end users are probably guys with street rods or t-buckets that are rolling egine showcases and probably dont have a real perspective to come back with a serious educated high performance review of the product.
 
Re: double the valves, keep your stock pistons cam and pushr

Bragging rights product money could be beyter spent to make more power $$ to performance ratio not that good
 
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