okay after a day of total freedom and boredem with new heads in the future here is what i am up against. afr 335 dart 335 /355/357.
okay after talk with afr and dart i learned this on the dart head. dart heads out flow everyone on the market hands down. quoted from dart. but i need special spring rates. dart heads 275 seat 760 open .
ok fine hard on valve train with my intended use dart wont do springs. we only sell 275 s 760 o .
okay buy bare heads have them set up. price just went up . call afr our heads out flow everyone on the market hands down. and we will for a few bucks more do a spring change and a titanium retainer upgrade. the cost was fair. the applacation. 540 cu 10.5.1 compression
736 int 714exh. 262 / 268 at 50. more confusion. more calls the following places were called .
dave riolo race engines. pat musi crate motors. shafrioff . sony,s mountain motors. talked about heads 335 dart 335 afr . wich is the best power maker for my applacation. the in return question from all but 2 . why do you want the small 335 cnc heads. for better flow and low end torque and throttle response. some chuckles. wich head is best. we sell them both what do you want. again the best power maker.
toss up on most with dart vs afr. now here is the catch. why run a lil head with lil flow numbers . you have 540 cu in. you will never notice the diffrence in low driveability and tq. you need 355,s or 357. you will never make any power or torque with them lil heads mid 750 to a lil higher and as much as 840 with 355 or 357. depending wich shop you talk to some said dart hands down some said afr and a few threw in brodix.
so what is best for complete power gains from start to stop in the hp/tq numbers . they claim that a 540 needs the big 355 357 runners to maxamize tq and hp through the entire rpm range.
and mike at wolfplace dave says hello. i told him i buy from you. any ways why would they push the bigger head over the smaller one with no price change. claiming better driveability over the entire range with the bigger runner.
who is full of bs or who is on the money. mike i know your views but please feel free to chime in. i got this from one shop d/r to be exact. dart heads make more power than anyone else could ever hope to make. we only sell what works, but yet i carry all heads .
your 540 needs 355 or 357,s you will loose alot of tq and hp with them small heads. and on to say. come by at closing time i am usually here till 6-630 i have both heads on my shelf i will flow a cylinder on a dart 335 and an afr 335 and you can see with your own eyes. where does the hype end and the power begin.
sorry for the long winded post . PLEASE ELABERATE with your opinion your real world results what you would do over or diffrent if you did it again and what you found when you did do it...
also the car light lil 69 camaro t400 3800 sth 410 gears . for those who said i left some out. dominator intake and pro systems carb dominator of course. lemons 2 1/8 step tube headers. i know who will handle my head order when that day comes . but please have some say . they was also persistant that at rpm ranges from 4k and up that the smaller heads wouldnt keep up .

well I don't have an answer for you, but you might get some if you go back and edit your entire post with paragraphs, correct spelling and punctuation. It was a pain in the a$$ to read

done just for you cody at random i threw in paragraphs and fixed a few words no my paragraphs periods and such are not correct lol

This ought to be fun! People get emotional about this stuff! I went through the exact same excercise a few years ago when I was first building my 540.

I talked to lots of guys who had 540's, but frankly most were more race deals, because not that many folks were running 540's in pump gas configurations. Today everyone has one. In fact they are getting to be sort of 'small" these days. Anyway, the overwhelming thing I was told by guys running Dart 320's and Brodix -2's etc, was that the engines just didn't "hang on" long enough at the top end. They all said they wished they had used larger heads since bottom end power was insane anyway.

AFR wasn't making BBC heads back then, and after lots of discussion with head porters I knew, the hands down favorite for casting integrity was Brodix. They all seemed to say the same thing about Darts...they were a better flowing port out of the box, but once you started porting, they felt there was lots of porosity issues and the like. They even showed me a couple of heads with pockets in the castings. The Brodix also has a killler stud boss area. Dart apparently gives pretty good pricing to the larger bulk buyers, so they like to use them for more profit, which is fine, and they will make the power numbers.

I went with Brodix 2Xtras-365 cc ports. I used them out of the box basically for the first two years. First version used a 262/273 solid roller and an old shorter Team G intake. Made 732 HP@6200 rpm and peak TQ right around 4600. It was a lot of fun with a Doug Nash 5 speed and 3.36 gears, but actually was really sort of crazy..the TQ came on so strong tire spin was inevitable even at 70 mph stomps. Literally would spin tires past 100 mph with speedo showing 120+ until you let out of it.

But even with heads that big, it still 'nosed over" as rpm went towards 7000. In fact it was down to 591 Hp at 7000.

Next version of motor was geared to move Peak HP a little higher and to hang on better. First and foremost, the heads were professionally ported and spent LOTS of time developing the ports. I mean lots of testing with different valve jobs, even different ones on the good and bad ports. They weren't enlarged much, but exhaust side really picked up. The chambers were opened a lot to unshroud valves and then heads were milled to get CC's back in line.

I also went to what some consider a huge intake,,the Super Victor. Many will tell you it is too large. Turned out during dyno testing it would have liked even more.

Cam went to a 272/278 with .731 lift.

Compression increased from 10.6 to 11.06. Still 93 octane.

When all done it made 825 hp@7400 rpm and peak TQ came in almost identical but at 5300 rpm now. At 7000 rpm, this combo was up over 210 hp!

After running it in the car, I've since dropped back to a 266/272 cam. Haven't dyno'd it yet with it, but the car is going much faster with it. Trap speeds are in the 139-141 mph range now @3600 lbs.

I drive mine everywhere with 3.07 final drive ratio, so it has to have decent TQ to do OK. Trust me, there is no lack of driveability even with these gears and a Dominator.

All that said, I know three other folks with 540's also. One has a motor with 11.2 compression, a Comp Xtreme roller around 266/272 I think, a 4150 carb and a Victor Jr intake and 335 AFR's. He recently made 670+ RWHP@6200 rpm on 93 octane. It peaks relatively low as folks have told you, but they do "hold on" much better than his old ported Brodix -2's. They aren't really dying at higher rpm..but not climbing either. He's not sure a set of 357's wouldn't have been better.

The other had a set of ported GM/Edelbrock rectangular ports. They were really nice, but power wasn't really where we wanted it, but it was a hyd roller and had small exhaust. He bought a set of 357's and installed them even though compression dropped about a full point to 9.5 or so. He was planning to eventually build a 632, so that's why he went 357's. None of us were sure how they would work out, but surprisingly he reported better driveability and much better throttle response and tire burning with the large heads. They really didn't put out a lot more peak RWHP when he dyno'd it, but they made an unreal difference in how broad the rpm range was. They were still pulling 1000 rpm higher than the old heads had been doing....they died quick past peak HP...these hung in there much better.

One other 540 was running a set of Dart CNC 335's. He did LOTS of dyno development work with it and eventually had it making 714 RWHP around 6700 rpm with vacuum pump etc etc. But I gotta tell you, this motor spent lots of time tuning and tweeking the basic combo to get there. It went through piston, cam etc changes regularly!


If you can find a great porter, I would seriously think about getting as cast and letting someone work them. CNC is all the rage, and great if you can't find anyone to do it right, but a good porter can do wonders. I've been monitoring lots of head testing lately on CNC's, and I can tell you that we haven't seen any flow close to advertised yet!

You might look into to 370 cc Darts, they are doing good with better valve angles.

So hopefully all this helps some. Low end TQ is not an issue with a 540. I feel they need some serious airflow.


JIM

jim thanks i kinda got the same kinda information from alot of people i talked to today wich confused me even more ha ha . i think the cnc is for the per say best now out of the box performance and i agree a head scientist is hard to beat . finding one that know his stuff , often makes the out of the box cnc a better deal for most . and please others share your info or exp. as you never stop learning .