Edelbrock heads # 60119

The new heads come in a bag with 50-100 small bb's in the bag from not getting cleaned well prior to assembly. 

I took one head apart and a lock was in two pieces

The heads are good quality and work well without doing anything to them and better with some work but really all they are is a factory head with some port work done

They are of course new aluminum with and have a thicker deck and like I said, a good quality casting. 

The more I work on the Edelbrock's the more I feel, just port a set of iron heads. For me, having the ability and machines, they are not worth the initial up front expense. 

If they were something special, I could see it but like I said, while nice, they are nothing special. 

I plan on doing a post in the near future on iron heads. I have two sets to do. One for a jeep and basically stock with a good valve job, bowl and short turn work. 

Second pair will be more like the Edelbrock heads or what I call "street ported" heads. Both sets will have full bronze guides and probably 2.02/1.625 valves 

1. The spark plug location of the Edelbrock heads seems to be different than AMC iron. I had to do major surgery on Doug's header flange plate to get a plug socket on the plugs. Very annoying.

2. If you use factory free flow manifolds on Edelbrock heads the manifold will crush the oil dipstick tube against the head outer bottom surface. Ask me how I know.

3. Head gaskets have to be modified to unshroud the oil drain back passage in the Edelbrocks.

4. The included push rod guide plates are not great. There are plates for other engines that fit and align a bit better.

5. Edelbrock provided valve springs are Ok for their Performer series cams but likely need changed for a more aggressive or roller cam build.

On the + side;

1. they don't seem to crack

2. they are light weight

3. repeat the above (it is like throwing the A/C system away on a factory A/C car such as mine)

4. the chamber size is such that you can get near 10:1 Cr with common available pistons on 401's

would I buy them again.... yes

do I like the price.... no

am I glad that Edelbrock is making something for our engines...... well "duh"

would i let jcisworthy prep a set of my new Edelbrock heads..... hel ya!

Walt

I then did some backyard port work on the eddies and put them on my Gremlin race car that was running a set of home ported 993 heads, picked up roughly 3 tenths and 3 mph in the 1/4 mile, probably a little more in it. 993's were not ported to the same extent as the 291C's, they were the first set of heads I did and I didn't really do a lot around the intake valve guide boss. Also worth mentioning that the 993's were limited by valve bounce issues at around 6300 rpm, one of the things I did with the eddies is put some dual springs on them (dual plus damper), so I can turn them to higher RPM, which is probably a big part of it.

I tend to think if you have a decent set of iron heads and have some sort of sense for getting in there with a die grinder yourself, you can save a lot of money over going to eddies, your time is free, but  depending on how far you want to go, you can still end up spending a fair bit of coin. You will as a minimum need to change the springs, retainers and locks. You might need to do the valve guides and if you are going that far, might want to consider some smaller diameter valve stems while you are at it.

My 993 were basically gasket matched and smoothed out inside, I kept the stock valves and did a backyard valve job, i.e. spun the valves with a drill and used some valve grind paste to clean up the surfaces, backcut the valves in the drill press with a flapper wheel on the grinder and that was it, good for 11.6 @ 114 mph in the Gremlin.

For the 291C's more extensive port work in the bowl around the valve guide, unshrouded the valves (this is more necessary with the 291C's than the 993's I feel), cut the valve guide bosses for positive seals, good dual springs, new retainers and locks, kept the stock valves in the end since the heads had already been fitted with K-lines and they were fine, backcut in the drill press with a file this time around.

Do I like the Eddies, damn right, weight saving alone is always a good thing on a race car. They have a more modern combustion chamber, which has to be worth something. Altered plug location is a bit of a pain, I'm running SCE copper gaskets and had to modify them significantly even with the smaller plug and had to grind on the header flange previously. If I was going again for the race application, I'd probably get them worked on first by somebody who knows what they are doing , either a KTRE CNC port job or send them to one of the guys on here for the full treatment, or maybe just step up to Indy's and all of the dramas that go with them. 

PS: The Javelin runs low 13's in the 1/4.

thank you!