El Rat
Well Known Member
My position is if you limit the RPM to 6000 you get more HP and torque with 817 heads. Obviously I am basing my position on 40+ years of racing.
One quick story: back in the early 80’s a famous head guru took one of the Buick configured heads for a SBC and epoxied the intake runner to raise the velocity. The problem with the Buick’s is/was they wouldn’t make power above 8000. The SBC Buick’s had a tall rectangular port and the thinking was if they could raise the short turn radius and thus make the port similar to a conventional SBC racing head they would get the best of both worlds. Well the head took a crap it made torque off the chart but wouldn’t rev over 6000. As an aside the head guru built the heads for Bernstein’s INDY car effort # 1 qualifier at Indy and crashed on the pace lap. What a maroon!
One quick story: back in the early 80’s a famous head guru took one of the Buick configured heads for a SBC and epoxied the intake runner to raise the velocity. The problem with the Buick’s is/was they wouldn’t make power above 8000. The SBC Buick’s had a tall rectangular port and the thinking was if they could raise the short turn radius and thus make the port similar to a conventional SBC racing head they would get the best of both worlds. Well the head took a crap it made torque off the chart but wouldn’t rev over 6000. As an aside the head guru built the heads for Bernstein’s INDY car effort # 1 qualifier at Indy and crashed on the pace lap. What a maroon!