Sooooo.... I have been talking about the Olds Speedmaster heads in some other posts, and also discussing having Grant Racing flow bench an out of the box cylinder head. Then it occurred to me that I should go straight to Speedmaster and ask them if they would please be so kind as to pass along flow specs which they actually did.

Here you go - straight from Speedmaster Engineering on the out of the box PCE281.2152 Olds cylinder heads on a 4.125" bore (Big Block):

.100" LIFT: Intake 84 CFM / Exhaust 67 CFM
.200" LIFT Intake 131 CFM / Exhaust 103 CFM
.300" LIFT Intake 197 CFM / Exhaust 138 CFM
.400" LIFT Intake 247 CFM / Exhaust 168 CFM
.500" LIFT Intake 279 CFM / Exhaust 180 CFM
.600" LIFT Intake 270 CFM / Exhaust 190 CFM

As I had suspected, these heads are indeed flowing pretty darned good right out of the box. With the flow numbers above being shrouded by the close proximity of the cylinder walls on a big block with the smallish 4.125" cylinders, no wonder my 403 with its vastly larger 4.351" cylinders is breathing as well as it is (as the cylinder walls are nowhere near the valves to impede flow any).

Surprised? I'm not - I felt it the minute I bolted my first set onto my 488 stroker.


Paul...

 

Those flow numbers are complete and total bullshit. And the guy in the video is an idiot. Do you see the mismatch of the CNC’d entry vs the rest of the casting? It’s horrible.
They flow in the 240’s at .600, that’s it. And the chambers have never been 77cc, more like 80-82, and they’re all over the place. I have the pics of my CNC program to prove it.
Sorry but it’s the truth.

 

Thank god for common sense

 

Ooops - looks like I struck a nerve there - sorry about that! I had thought getting the flow specs straight from Speedmaster engineering was going to be acceptable for the sake of discussion, saving me the expense and troubles of having Reed Grant flow one of my out of the box heads.

Ok, well, back to the original plan then. I will be dropping off another rotating mass at Grant Racing to be balanced shortly, so I will also drop off one of the PCE281.2152 Olds cylinder heads as I have discussed with him. Reed is truly one of the best in the business. He designed some of the most wicked balancing equipment out there that the NASCAR teams use. He made all of his money years ago, retired, tried golfing, canasta, shuffleboard, fishing, making moonshine, sitting around watching the grass grow, but retirement just didn't work for him, so he built another shop right behind his house in the back 40 and jumped back into building some really wild mountain motors in his absolutely loaded machine shop. Being retired, he doesn't pull any punches - if you want him to do it, get in line, and when it's done, it's done. Don't like it? Go somewhere else LOL. I can hardly restrain myself in his shop, like a kid in a candy store, watching cylinder head CNC porting in his booths leaving nose prints on the sight glass, looking at the 3D programming maps on screen against the in process metal washing away in the coolant bath on massive mega cylinder heads with ports you could throw a cat through, producing scratch built CNC custom billet connecting rods, balancing all kinds of things at SFI ridiculous speeds, harmonics testing, dyno pulls, the smell of methanol and nitromethane, I can go on and on. We have a mutual respect for each other, so he lets me roam around his shop unsupervised with the understood NO TOUCH policy. I truly learn something cool every time I stop in to see him. Heck, I've thought about retiring from Hydratech and going to work with him (doh!).

I will go back to PLAN A to have him flow against a 4.350" bore to see what is going on inside of my 403's cylinders and will have him also flow against a standard big block Olds bore of 4.125 too. He is backed up forever deep, but I pay cash which of course is king, so he pushes my work along a little faster for some discretionary mad money. Peak season is upon him, with everybody wanting their stuff yesterday, but he said he will squeeze my work in best he can. I don't know what that translates into right now, but we will get some highly precise data from him to compare against. It may indeed validate what Mark is saying, essentially wasting some of my hard earned money for Reed's time, but I've got an awfully strong hunch from my engine builds that the numbers may be interesting so I need to satisfy my curiosity (Reed is also curious, as he has indicated some interest in mapping out the ports and sonic testing port wall thickness to possibly get into doing these heads too). I have been wanting to whip out the die grinders and the whole slew of overlength carbide porting bits every time I have had one of these heads in my hands to blend the rough transitions in the CNC profiled port entries / exits - just about screaming at me to do it when I look at them, but then the head has to come completely apart and I know I won't be able to restrain myself until I am thoroughly covered in aluminum powder from head to toe. That stuff gets into the pores of my skin, resulting in having to pop these small little zits that spit out a little tiny aluminum particle, but at least nowhere near as bad as back in the days of doing a lot of custom specialized paint and body work dealing with fiberglass. At least my clothes won't rust in the washing machine like doing up some cast iron heads! Those who know can relate

Let's see what the results are when Reed is done flowing one of these heads.

Paul...

 

Drop off two heads, so you get an average and know its not a fluke.

If your clothes are rusting in the washing machine, have an appliance repairman check the discharge pump in your washer. Have him also check the rinse cycle, to see if its adding fresh water.

Gloves, protective sleeves and Tyvek suits are great to keep "particles" off your skin. Don't forget safety goggles, face mask and ear protection. This should help with a majority of your "zit" problem.

 

they won’t even be close to what Speedmaster told you.

 

Just so people know, I have entrusted a pair of my Speedmaster heads to Mark (aka cutlassefi here) to have him work his magic on them a while back. I know that he has the experience and firsthand knowledge of what these heads respond to on an Olds, essentially knowing exactly what to do to get them into any kind of shape to handle the supercharged 540 I have slowly but surely been making progress with. I am a firm believer that the heads are largely where the power is. I don't care how much boost I could throw at an out of the box cylinder head (in this class of commonly available basic head), they need to flow - inhale and exhale very well, especially in the forced induction large cubic inch package I am building. Mark has a dynamometer and a flow bench, so he sees first hand what works, and that's exactly what I need. I have painstakingly hand ported so many cylinder heads over the years that I have lost count. Could I have massaged them myself? Of course, but without access to a flow bench, and constant testing of what works and what doesn't, the cylinder to cylinder variations would have likely been all over the map, and I may have even gotten into a coolant passage errantly chasing a profile I had in mind for the port (not funny). With experienced CNC porting, you can count on repeatable results port to port, and I have left them in his hands with an extended timeline to work with. I have chuckled with Mark that the longer they are in his possession, the more advanced they will be as he is continuously working on evolving the designs, continuously finding a few CFM here and there along the way as a result of working with these all of the time. Even if I had direct access to a flow bench, it would be back and forth between the grinding bench and the flow bench more times than I would care to count. The other problem is that aluminum is reasonably easy to take off, but obviously a beeyatch to put back in, especially deeper inside a port (doh!) - been there / done that - no fun. I have not yet taken a die grinder to a Speedmaster head, so I have no idea what the wall thicknesses are and would hate to find out the hard way.

Sooo.... while it may seem that Mark and I toss things around back and forth at each other, I have the utmost respect for the work he is doing for me with my cylinder heads - that's why I sent them to him. I will not be spinning this engine much past 6000 RPM, so I couldn't justify going into a more exotic cylinder head. Mark will spiff these heads up just enough to do exactly what I need with 15 +/- pounds of boost in what is essentially going to be mostly a civilized street engine. I enjoy a good technical discussion as I believe some have seen, but it's just different points of view in how you may approach something. Mark knows what he knows, and I know what I know, and then there is everything in between. I like to probe things with outside of the box thinking, while Mark likes to go with what works. I believe these two approaches combined work together when balanced. If it ever seems adversarial, rest assured that it most certainly is not - just ping ponging information back and forth, nothing more. I believe Mark when he says Speedmaster's provided numbers are inflated. What I want to see more than anything is the difference between the flows of a 4.350" bore as compared to a 4.125" bore. I also want to see what variations may possibly exist port to port and from one head to another. I also believe I see that Speedmaster has made some changes to the heads over the years I have been using them. This latest set that I have heading over to Grant Racing just came in not too long ago, so curious to also see if they have made any particular enhancements to the flow rates, and cylinder to cylinder balance... Maybe I'll find that I just wasted some money testing only to find nothing in particular - I don't know why I am so drawn to that in certain circumstances as I don't like wasting hard earned money - I'd rather have something to show for it. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back? Or not.

Summary? We shall see what Grant Racing may find in a basic flow bench session with the pair of heads I will be dropping off to him. He's curious too. It may be a while before his results come in, but so be it, as I am waiting on other long lead special order items like the LS firing order cams that haven't been nailed down yet and various other parts.

And Ralph, yes, I definitely cover up, full face shield, eye protection, ear protection and all, but those little particles are like sand - they always get into any place they can and maybe it's my skin type that is sensitive to this. I blow down often, thoroughly shower up when I am done, but the next 3-5 days are always irritating with these particles apparently getting into the pores of my skin. I have not tried a Tyvek paint suit, that might work for intensively messy things I occasionally tangle with that produce lots of fine metallic particulate. As far as the clothes, those fine little particles of various metals I am talking about seem to get entrenched into certain fabrics refusing to come out, then you see traces of rusted / discolored particulates, especially if I had been working with ferrous metals. I always make sure to wash some non critical laundry after running my work clothes through the washer so as not to incur the wrath of my wife (!) with her laundry. The washtub that the washing machine empties into is constantly rust stained at the bottom from the particles of metals in my clothing from all of the machining I get into on a day-to-day basis. That's just the way it has always been my entire life fooling with mechanical things all the time. The washing machine is just fine, it's just me lol.

Thank you all for reading along!

Paul

 

The flow 4.351 vs 4.125 bore depends on stroke also.

 

"Clark455", when we insulated houses we would cover any exposed skin with Baby Powder, when finished just run ice cold water over your arms to rinse. Worked great !

 

Mark is correct those numbers cannot be right here are the numbers from my CNC ported speedmaster heads that knowlton's thunderheads did.

 

Did I read this thread correctly?
You have a 403 with the Speedmaster heads on it?
I'm really curious to hear about your combination.
Im doing (re-doing) mine again right now.
It's a hydraulic roller set up with an RPM intake.
Any time slips?
Jay
443 480 3342

 

Hi Paul
Did you ever get flow numbers on those heads?

 

We have flowed all the heads we have tested on our dyno engine. Here are real SpeedMaster flow numbers;
.100" 67/64 53
.200" 138/134 98
.300" 203/195 133
.400" 237/242 157
.500" 240/248 172
.600" 243/257 179

Showing about 0.600" is no different. We then port matched those same heads and got the following results.
.100" 75/69
.200" 144/145
.300" 208/202
.400" 248/243
.500" 256/261
.600" 260/269

The two numbers are inside/outside port.

Decent increase in flow just port matching. I have pictures, but I'll save those for part 6, which I have not started to write up. We made 500HP with the port matched heads, the Howards hydraulic roller we have used, Torker intake, 850 CFM dobule pumper and 1 3/4" headers. Not too bad. The exact same combination made 477HP with stock out of the box heads.

By the end of this coming weekend I hope to have flow data on every Olds big block head except for H's. I have most already. Also have a lot of aluminum head flow data including Gen 3 Edelbrocks.

jerry

 

When you were making 500 HP corrected what was the observed or uncorrected or measured HP? And where did you dyno test at?

 

We tested at Livernois Motorsports in Dearborn Heights MI. When we tested that combination the dyno cell was 97.5 degrees F, 28.75 in-Hg and 38% humidity. The STP correction factor was 1.104 and the Density Altitude was 4129 ft. You should be able to take 501HP @ 5000 RPM and 566 lb-ft @ 3900 and work backwards. SAE correction factor was 1.061.

This will be in write up #6, so I don't want to spoil too much about that write up.

jerry

 

I can work backwards if you put the data up, thanks. What was the date you tested?

 

The data is up. 501 HP with a 1.104 correction factor. With some basic math you can work back to uncorrected numbers and then use the other correction factor to get SAE corrected numbers. I don't see how date is important, but it was 6/17 at 5:51pm. It was dyno pull 614 if that matters.

jerry

 

Jerry

Here's what I was looking for,

Fuel A
Fuel B
Air SCFM
BSFC
BMEP
VE

Now this may be listed somewhere but I didn't see it, I did see you testing many different combinations, which was great reading. The correction factor is one thing, how's its arrived at is what I'm interested in. I do have another question: Did unmodified factory production Olds heads make 477 HP? Maybe you can correct me, the last set, E castings if I remember right flow around 226 CFM @ 28".

 

I have all that data. However I leave for Michigan tomorrow for more testing. When I am up there I barely have time to breath, so remind me mid next week and I have all the data.

jerry

 

Ok-good luck!

 

that’s incredible you picked up 17 peak cfm from a port match.

 

Normally the head to intake interface isn’t the choke point for flow, especially on a non ported head. But these ports looked bad. I have pictures of before and after that will be in write up #6.

i can tell you that we don’t put any sleeves in the pushrod holes, so it’s not like we opened them a huge amount, just 1-2” in.

 

whats more amazing is you picked up 11 cfm at .200”

 

Once we are done with the port matched SpeedMaster testing, which should be today, then I will get Dave, the cylinder head whisperer, to perform his “valve job” to the heads. I’d expect them to pick up a little more with that.

Honestly I think the value in this are the Speedmaster heads. They are inexpensive and with some mild work flow good enough for over 500HP.

Our last step with these heads are to run the bigger CompCams cam with these heads. I am certain that will eclipse 500HP, probably 520ish. Then I’ll get Dave to work on them!

jerry

 

The intake port entry on these is horrible out of the box. It’s pretty easy to improve them there.

 

OK I see the 477 HP came with the Speedster head, not a production head.

 

We made 454 with the stock C heads and the Howard’s roller cam. The heads were modified for studs and guideplates and had the cross overs blocked, which I don’t think does very much to be honest.

i need to run the heads with a cam we ran before to see what filling the crossover did.

jerry

 

I know what the entry is like..it has no affect on flow until the valve curtain area exceeds the min port csa which is .410” lift or greater and why you see them stalling just over .400” in stock form, certainly not .200”. the port entry stock is 2.275” X 1.320” not including the CNC radius .. which is 2.55 sq”(that’s -15% corner radius)

the curtain area of the valve at .410” lift is 2.54 sq”

 

I see you're still doing your job on here....................LOL AWWWWW

 

until I get fired 😎

 

You can be sarcastic all you want, the data is the data. Flow bench data is far from extremely repeatable. And flow does NOT mean horsepower. Why do J heads make the same power as C heads when we did our testing? Why did E's make MORE power than C's? It's easy to poke at people when you have a keyboard, math and little data. I have about 650 dyno runs and about 100 flow tests and I am very transparent. No poking, just data trying to help people, try it one day.

jerry

 

Also, we made 25 more HP with port matching the Speedmasters using the FlatOut gaskets as a template. Again, data. You can talk theory all you want, I have two engineering degrees and a math degree, but data trumps theory and we picked up 25 HP, period,

 

I’m not using my keyboard to poke fun at anything. I’ve had my own flow bench for over 25 years. I also know for a fact, no matter how much port matching you do at the port entrance, if the entrance has more area than the valve curtain area at a specific lift, there is no increase in flow….your flow data is flawed.

you didn’t even notice you gained no flow at .400” after the port match but you gained 11 at .200”? that right there should have gave you a clue something wasn’t right…your gains were reversed on what actually happens.

instead of pulling out your engineering cards to wave at me..why not prove my numbers and facts wrong? I gave you the numbers, which are a known fact about head porting basics.

 

He just did. He has dyno results that debunk your statements.

 

stay on track..it’s the head flow numbers that are messed up. you don’t even know what the MCSA is or where to find it…that leaves you out of the discussion.

go ahead and try to shoot holes in my facts and #’s I posted regarding valve curtain area vs MCSA. Its port fundamentals 101. do you really believe he gained 11cfm at .200” and nothing at .400” from a port match?

 

the date matters because he can find out the exact weather conditions at that time on that day.

 

Yes that's why I asked for the date, but I have no reason to believe the dyno testing is inaccurate, and really who going to go to all this trouble to misrepresent data? I'm just always looking, and my first question is always what was the observed HP. And really Jerry should get all the credit for pulling off these tests, and has gone way out of his way to supply me with data, thanks Jerry! But I will always ride with CANADIANOLDS because he's a production part NA freak like myself, and takes his job of reeling in cutlassEFI very serious, there is that. I found these 455 tests to be the best reading on here so far.........................

 

No gain at -.400" lift? What data are you looking at. The original head flowed 237/242 at 0.400. The port matched head flowed 248/243. That's no gain? If you average the two ports the stock head flows 239/240 CFM and the port matched head flows 245/246. Is that no gain? Also, your "logic" is flawed because, they way you describe it all of the flow through the port is evenly distributed across the port. Meaning that at .100 and .200 lift, you could easily cut the port size in half and have no impact on flow. Wrong. Take a screw driver and move it around the port at low lift. If you were correct it would NEVER have an impact on flow because 1/4" or 3/16" wide blocking part of the port wouldn't make a difference. But it does if you put in the correct area.

Also, since you say you have 25 years of experience of flowing things you would know that flow numbers are NOT exact. Yesterday I was a flowing a D head and it was flowing about 80 CFM at low lift. But the number was moving between 77 and 83. That's the nature of the beast. Thats why the flow bench I'm using takes data about every 3/4 of a second for a total of 5 samples. But guess what? It's not moving up and down in a nice rythmatic fashion. Sometimes I stays higher longer, sometimes lower longer. Flow it again and the numbers will move some, not a lot, but some.

Also, most of the time you put clay around the port to smooth the transition and simulate and intake manifold. Is the shape of the clay the same everytime, no. If I was in the business of flowing heads, and I'm NOT, I'm just providing data, I would have a 3D printed inlet to take this variability out of the system, like the guys at Livernois Motorsports do when they are doing cylinder head developement.

And like I said before port matching the heads picked up 25 horsepower on the engine dyno. If you talk to a real cylinder head flow person they will tell you that flow on the flow bench is at BEST a guideline. To really know if a change works you make the change, run it on the dyno and see the HP. If it made power it worked. This is why E heads flow LESS than C heads but yet made more HP. The J heads, which flowed poorly, made the same or slightly more HP (in a "stock" configuration) than the C heads. Why? Why is flow not the be all end all representation? Because velocity plays a role. There are these things on the flow bench called velocity tubes and you can measure the velocity at different points. Guess what, the bottom of the port has more velocity and flow than the top, I'm sure you know that. But yet your argument, doing the match, is that flow is equal through the whole port. While you didn't say that, you implied that by doing the match.

Please stop. You are just being a hater and it's obvious.

jerry

 

Is Speedmaster still allowed to knock off American products and copy them in China? Summit dropped them.
http://Summit pulls Speedmaster prod...NpZGtkixtvXnpq

 

I clicked the link and it said blocked. So not sure. I know, from talking to the guys at Livernois Motorsports, that they have done some flagrant coping of products and gotten "busted". But no idea if there have been any ramifications. I would suspect that since this a copy of an Edelbrock head that is no longer available it would still be available. But you never know what's going to happen.

jerry