Say you had ~$700-$800 to spend on heads or heads/headwork. What heads would you get and/or what work would you have done? Or would you get 'better' heads (in the price) and do headwork yourself? This on a 350 sbc.. Just curious on what you would do, I may be in this position soon.

I was in a similar situation to yours about 4 years ago. What I decided was to buy 180cc Dart Iron Eagles and run them stock. They perform well out the box and yet have a lot of room for growth. I have since had them bowl ported, relieved, and gasket matched. My head guy says there is still a ton more potential in them. Says he can probably port them to 210-215 cc's.

If you are more concerned about immediate performance and less about improving future performance, you might consider a pair of Vortecs. They will probably out-perform the Iron Eagles out of the box, but will not have near the potential of the Dart's.

If you do go with the Dart's, I'd forget about going with the 1.25" single springs and go for the dual springs to open up your cam options. Hope all this helps.

Chris

Thanks, that's good advice. I forgot to mention anything but Vortecs (already have intake and carb for right now, don't want to get a new intake right now), and would like to run 89 octane as the highest I need to run. I'd also like to keep my Crane Energizer 272 cam.

Taylor,

My Nova ran a best 13.09 @ 103.4, 1.95 60' with stock Iron Eagle's and a Comp XE-262 cam. It weighs 3380 with me.

Chris

I was in that position about 2 years ago and i called up competition products, got, Bare Sportsman II's {get what ever bare head you want im not going to make that call for you but id go 200cc myself} and ordered their 1 piece stainless steel valves for i think 75 bucks, got Manton single big block springs 125lb seat and 350 open for 50 bucks, and the matching 10* steel retainers and comp superlocks. Got em in the mail, port matched and bowl blended and reduced the matirial around the guide a bunch, machined the spring pad to the 1.50 in. needed {borrowed tool} set my installed height, put em together and away we went. i think it was around 900 bucks by the time i was done. I Had a BUNCH of time in them but this was my first set of heads that id ever done work like that to and i was absolutlely obsessed with getting it right. Thats what id do.

If you are looking for up to 400HP you might get in touch with Wolfplace and ask him how much he would charge for a set of Pro Topline Torkers that have had a bowlport and gasket match done.
I thought I saw someone here in the last couple of days that said Competition Products was offering a set of these heads complete for $500 bucks.
God know's what the components would be like though.I would also question wether the valves would seal or not.

They should be good for an easy 400HP with a mild cam.

If you want more than that persue the Pro Topline Lightning,TrickFlow,AFR type around 190-200cc's.

They will cost you more money but they will leave you room to grow,HP wise.
Then later on you can have them ported.