This is my experience.......
I have owned my CFE W8's for over 10 years. With the exception of a couple years where I was either building my house and sit out by choice or changing venues I raced.
Only once did I have to pull the heads and found a leak not caused by some catostropic failure below. This was not a water leak but a leak in the pushrod area of the intake runner. The heads were built and tested for a Pro Stock Truck racing effort by Patterson Racing. I bought them from Patterson. They would never decelerate against the engine as those of us with automatics would.
After a few passes I started getting an oily plug at Englishtown NJ. We performed a compression test followed by a leakdown. No leak in the combustion chamber. Spread some silicone over the effected area and won my first KOS race. I talked with Ray Barton who was very helpful in giving me some tips on handling oil in these engines. I went home and pulled the heads to check all the intake runners. Welded up the effected areas and never had trouble with this again.
I recently had a water leak. Was absolutely sure it had to be the heads. Planning to part out the engine due to a cracked crank I sent the heads off to have them completely checked out and a new valve job done. Several with these heads have tried outsourcing these heads for a valve job. After butchering CFE's trick angles the heads do not perform as original. CFE is one of the two shops I have found that get it right. If done wrong you may have to replace all the seats to get it back to right.
Over 10 years racing/owning these heads I can not blame any problems on the heads. I had a set of Arrington castings that gave far more trouble in this area. They were early Craftsman Truck heads that Bob Kesoloski ran. Not complaining won a lot of races with these to.
Leon
Leon: What is the shop other than CFE have you used for work on the CFE heads. You can PM if you don't want to name them here.
