Anybody heard of or experienced this? Oil leaking by the valve seals because the valve springs are setting in a pool of oil due to the way that the spring pockets are machined? Oil return holes to high also? I'm interested in a set of 195 street heads but if this oil consumption thing is true maybe I should be looking at some other brand. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

I have AFR 195s on my 383, and find no oil problems whatsoever.
With as much R&D that go into AFR heads, I find it hard to believe that this oil consumption idea is an issue and I have heard it on other forums.

my brother has the 195s on his 406 with no oil problems that i know off and he loves the performance of the heads

One of the keys to long valve guide life is proper valvetrain geometry. If the rocker side loads the valve stem, the guide will wear excessivly.

sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. AFR heads are not known for this. the goofball that that told you this, what kind of heads is he selling? Has he ever even owned an aluminum head for a SBC?

Tom

i have heard of lots of people having the same oil problem with the afr . not all afr heads are created equal. when you take into consideration the mass production of any head and bits get dull and need to be sharpened and reset . this problem is not only isolated to afr.. i would recomend that any set of heads you buy that you throughly check them out for errors. its taking alot for granted to just bolt on any out of the box product.. jmo . but i have heard of the problem.. and the you have the true afr group that would swear the heads were made by god himself. this problem can be found on all manufacture heads in about 2 out of every hundred or so . i mean come on guys its only comon sense to realize that parts with errors do slip by quality control..and often times most of the comsumers to . especially the guy who thinks wow i got afr /perfection lets just bolt theese on . then the errorbecomes your cause at that point you own the product.check check and recheck EVERYTHING twice

well I do agree with the fact that you are bound to get a bad part from every manufacture once in a while even the high quality ones. My only experience with the afr's is the 195's I put on my 406 and they don't have many miles on them yet but there were no problems/defects with them and no problem with oil consumption.

I don't think they "sharpen and reset" drill bits on their CNC equipment.

And your statement about "2 out of every hundred heads in every manufacturer???"

We 100% CNC machine (not port, machine which includes a CNC valve and guide job) heads where I work and the tooling is quite expensive and lasts a long time when the proper lube is used.

thats a mighty big when

I've heard of others having this problem with AFR heads, but they have all been with the 210, 220 and 227 heads. Some mill work was done to help drain oil out of and away from the spring pockets and it cleared up the oil consumption issues these people had.

Friend of mine has the AFR 195.... Oil was seeping through the Rocker Studs because they weren't sealed. The pockets near the valve train really do pool up the oil though, but we havn't seen it bad enough to cover the positive valve seal.

Originally posted by Twilightoptics:
Friend of mine has the AFR 195.... Oil was seeping through the Rocker Studs because they weren't sealed. The pockets near the valve train really do pool up the oil though, but we havn't seen it bad enough to cover the positive valve seal. =
Hey Paul,,,
Tell your friend "when all else fails, read the instructions" :D
The heads come with a great set of installation instructions that tell you in big bold letters that the studs are installed for shipping purposes only & not torqued.
You are supposed to loosen them, adjust the guideplates on the engine & seal them,,,

You can even read them here:
http://www.airflowresearch.com/
Click on "tech support" & then install instructions ;)

nice! :D :D :D

now now come on you know them afr heads are just expensive paper weights . lol just kidding

Hey Mike, reading the instructions takes all the sport out of it! :D

Originally posted by turbo:
Hey Mike, reading the instructions takes all the sport out of it! :D =
That's what my wife keeps telling me :rolleyes:

Originally posted by deiinc:
Anybody heard of or experienced this? Oil leaking by the valve seals because the valve springs are setting in a pool of oil due to the way that the spring pockets are machined? Oil return holes to high also? I'm interested in a set of 195 street heads but if this oil consumption thing is true maybe I should be looking at some other brand. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any replies. =

deiinc,
To your original post way back when men were men & sheep were nervous :D
=

I have sold & used probably around a 100 sets of AFR heads & have heard of very few problems & most of these ended up being "operator error"
I have personally had no problems yet.

I an not saying they can't or don't ever make mistakes, but one of my pet peeves is people who have heard of a friend who had a friend who knew someone that had a problem therefore all of a sudden there are "lot's of problems" :(

AFR is not perfect & although I am a dealer & feel they have one of the best heads out there, I would never say they are "perfect", no one I know of is,,,

But there track record speaks for itself.
They sell thousands of heads a year & you will hear of a handful of problems & then you get guys repeating how all AFR heads are junk because of one or two instances.

I agree completely that it is a good idea to check everything you buy as you as the installing mechanic or end user are ultimately responsible for the end result.

Again, not saying AFR is perfect but they & Brodix are two of the most respected head manufacturers out there & both companies do an outstanding job of quality control.

This does not mean stuff never happens as it does, no matter who you are dealing with.

But in my opinion when it comes to heads,,, AFR & Brodix are at the top of the food chain as far as quality & quality control.

Is this calling AFR the "God of heads",, hardly but of all the ones I have personally used I can honestly say I have never had to fix anything yet.

Again, this is not saying they or anyone else can't have a problem or you shouldn't check just that I wouldn't be afraid to take a set out of the box, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS clean em', check the springs & bolt em' on from what I have seen.

BTW, this is also assuming you are buying your heads directly from AFR, Brodix or an authorized dealer & not someone buying bare stuff & throwing parts at it.

This is like buying a Scat crank off of Ebay for half price & then bitching & calling all Scat cranks junk because you got a piece of crap from someone selling seconds
Just my 3 cents worth ;)

Almost forgot, if you email me I can probably save you a buck or two on either AFR or Brodix heads,, I have pretty fair pricing on both ;)

To Doug F, My son sets up and runs CNC lathes for parts with very tight tolerences and he keeps a very close eye and ear on all his work. I'll guarantee that you any automated tooling has to be checked frequently to keep everything working properly. Aluminum is much easier to get a longer time between checks but you still have to be carefull and see that everything is still set properly at regular intervals. If not, you can scrap a lot of very expensive material in a very short time. Not everybody can do this job. Even aluminum dulls bits, even carbide bits, and the stuff my son runs has the bits changed at regular intervals and i think someone re-sharpens them somewhere. Occasionally the night shift continues to run the machine he has set up during the days and this usually causes a lot of bad parts because these guys just aren't as careful as my son. He has to redo a lot of their work. Sometime it can be fixed and sometimes it can't. The machinist makes all the difference. My son also told me to be careful as to where you buy a product as it may be a second if the price is too good. I reccommend getting any AFR or Brodix pieces from Wolfy as he has good prices and gets the parts directly from the manufacturer.

Interesting topic. I have had a set of AFR 195s for about 4 years and love em. I never had an oil consumption problem until I had the heads freshened up as part of a rebuild.

The thing smoked like crazy when I first got it running again. I took it back to the builder and he swapped on viton seals and it has helped a great deal, but hasn't solved the problem completely. I sealed the rocker studs per the instructions when I first got the heads but maybe the engine builder didn't.....

I went to a higher lift roller cam at the same time but the geometry still checks out so I am still chasing the problem a bit. Any more input would be a great help.

Thanks to all for the replies. I read about this potential problem on another forum,(smokemup.com) I did a search TC to see if this topic had been discussed here before and didn't come across anything. It's hard to ignore the posts that some guys are really having a problem with this, but on the other hand it is not possable to know exactly why the problem exists for them. Weather it's poor geometry and worn guides,rebuilt heads with the wrong seals, a worn out set that somebody got at a swap meet and popped them onto his engine without checking them out first or whatever the reason. There are many reasons, but the bottom line is that if this was an across the board problem with the AFR heads, there would be alot more posts about it, and or AFR would have fixed the problem by now or be out of the head business. There, now I have convinced myself that the AFR heads are ok and I will leave them on my "things to buy list"

MIKE, You have given me a price and it is a few bucks less, plus i'm sure that you get them direct being that there made are in your back yard smile.gif So thats worth something.

Thanks Again.

Here is that thread from smokemup.com

http://www.smokemup.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1167&highlight=afr+pocket

I'm not sure why many folks would have no problems at all and these guys would have major issues but it seems like this issue is pretty well documented and not just Internet hear-say. These are AFR 190 heads, not 210's . . . Maybe AFR had a bad batch of heads or a couple bad sets that squeeked through QC ???????

Originally posted by Eric68:
Here is that thread from smokemup.com

http://www.smokemup.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1167&highlight=afr+pocket

I'm not sure why many folks would have no problems at all and these guys would have major issues but it seems like this issue is pretty well documented and not just Internet hear-say. These are AFR 190 heads, not 210's . . . Maybe AFR had a bad batch of heads or a couple bad sets that squeeked through QC ??????? thats about the only problem from an individual I have ever heard about AFR heads...and I think theres more to that story..and it keeps coming up in just about every forum mentioning AFRs...first off, he said he changed to teflon seals before the heads were even going on the engine..and...it just sounds strange....nuff said

I think it depends on the machinest. If you can find a great one, your much less likely to have these problems, and if something does happen your machinest should be able to fix the problem. I'm still confussed about my old 355 with dart II heads blah blah. Anyway that thing was burning oil like crazy even when it only had half a quart of oil in it. I'm still amazed how it burned oil when there was no oil in it!

I call today for a set I ordered and the salesman said
"I haven't been able to get any information from the shop foreman ,we have been swamped...I will however have have something for you on Monday "

I hope this got nothing to do with the AFR heads oil consumtion graemlins/sad.gif

I had the same problem with Canfield Heads. Have had two different set of Iron heads on this shortblock but with the Canfields it smoked. They claimed my engine was bad or I installed them incorrectly. I even shipped them back to them so they could inspect them. They refused to replace them. I was fortunate to have bought them from Jeg's and they refunded my money. Beware of these heads as they also have very high drain hole location and spring seats deeply cut. I can only imagine that this was the cause. My consumption was only through the exhaust side