here's a story that i'm pretty embaressed to tell but hopefully it will save someone else some money.

i bought a set of heads off of ebay for cheap to replace my stock heads, aussie 2v heads, took them to get cleaned up and turned out they were cracked and welded on the edge of ta chamber. 550 bucks for em but i'm using the rockers off of them so i wasn't at a total loss.

next i bought a set of ported heads from a distributor fully machined and ready to go. turns out they flow huge cfm, but at the price of having a 4v intake port and valves which shroud these small chambers. well i don't know how many people know this but there is no 4v 400 intake lol, so out comes the credit card and i got a $400 polished 351c 4v performer and i believe 250-300 dollar price motor-sports adapters plus a 200 dollar maching charge to get the intake to fit just right. didn't mind this until i went to put on my 500 dollar DUI dizzy and it's huge GM cap hit my nice ford intake. so once again here comes the visa and i got 315 dollars in a msd pro billet ready to run dizzy setup because even a stock cap hit slighty. not bad, i like the msd stuff and i could sell the DUI and get some money back from it. well all is said and done, and i put a few days in putting the engine compartment back together looking nice, and finally got to roll it over and nothing happened. ok, so before i had my clutch hit in the belhousing somewhere, so my dad gets under the truck and listens for a ping when i roll it over. he gets some water coming from my headers and now i i'm mad. ports are into the water jacket somewhere and i have cylinders filled with coolant. i had to tear the engine back out and its sitting at the builders as we speak and now i need another set of them, and im not going to buy stock heads from anyone ever again unless they get pressure tested first. i'm currently working on trying to get my money back on these heads from the dealer and i will let you know how this goes by the time it's resolved.

now im going to have to call jon kaase and get chi 2v heads, break out the old 400 performer intake and im going to spend 2-3000 more dollars on this engine. do your self a favor and buy the good stuff the first time, because trying to save yourself money isn't worth the hassle.

i'm sorry to ramble about it, but if i can save someone the same headaches i have gone through it will be worth it.

 

you should have just gotten your heads ported and polished, and rebuilt and saved the time.

 

which set? now with my pistons i'm stuck with running a closed chamber head to keep up my compression and i can't run a 4v head unless i do aftermarket or use exhaust adapters to run with my headers.

 

Sorry to hear about your luck bro, I hope things start to turn around for you real soon!

 

Dude that really sucks...I hope it all works out for you. I was following your build thread, and I'm sure your engine is still gonna be reeeeeeeeeeal nasty.

 

I had a similar, but not as disastrous engine building nightmare. Cheapest machine shop in the book with the least negative reputation, ebay "made by the same folks who make brand name parts" junk, failure to communicate, etc etc.... Now I have an expensive piece of yard art.

 

I also just went through a similar situation last winter. The kaase heads I bought had been shaved on the intake side and the seller never let me know until I called him after nothing fit. finally decided to run stacked intake gaskets. Get it all straitened out and running. let it sit a week and one cylinder is full of water. Take the heads off, return them to the machine shop for a new untouched set. I was out a set of head gaskets and two sets of intake gaskets when it was all over.

I feel your pain and I hope it all works out for you, even if you wallet is a little lighter.

 

Some times saving a few bucks cost more in the end. I just finished up a 429 for my 78. I got about 6 grand into it. I started with a plan of what I wanted and didnt skimp on any parts.

 

This kind of goes with my thread on LMC sheet metal. You go cheap, you get cheap. Stick with ARP bolts, named brand heads (unless rebuild) but it all depends what you want to do. Me, I just want a decent cam, carb, intake and exchaust. As long as my truck sounds good, runs good, and has some power I'm happy. I had a mustang with 390RWHP and a lot of money invested. This project, is simply just to drive.

 

Sorry to hear about the bad luck.

 

no one has to feel sorry that i made mistakes... thats not why i posted this but to help people from wasting hard earned cash.