I'm building an engine around the concept of Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Races (PSMCDR). I'm a bit limited in my area as far as head work goes so I'm looking as far as Spokane WA, a two hour drive from me. Specifically, I'm doing a set of 906 heads and as far as I know would be limited to a performance multi-angle valve job only. Can anyone point me to a shop near my area? Thanks!

The closest places I can recommend is either Somers machine in Vancouver, WA or Southworth LLC in Eugene, OR
Talk to Archie Somers at 360-699-5205 and or Carl or Don at Southworth at 541-431-0556.
Call them both and let them know what your doing and see which one you like the best or the least
Tell them I (Cab) recommended them to you
If they don't tell you what you want to hear then try Valley head Services in Northridge,CA at 818-993-7000
Larry Ofria is the owner and he has been in business for 30+ Yrs specializing in Hi Po head and engine work for racing.
I use to race a 1963 Plymouth M.W. car in NHRA stock, I had to learn who was good on machine work, trannys, converters and every thing else in that car and who wasn't worth doing business with
I wish I knew a good NHRA stock 440 class racer to send you to for your head work but I haven't race NHRA stock since 1988, the proper valves (that will check legal)can make as much as 20 HP more over a not so good replacement set
Good luck on this, to outrun the fastest cars in your class you need as good as or better parts that they have and you have to work harder and smarter to out run them
It won't be easy, cheap or quick to occur, DANG IT
Good luck, go get them

Pro Power in Walla Walla WA (509) 522-3811

with todays world why limit yourself geographically ?

send them to Best Machine, or BES

Porter Racing Heads gets my vote.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far. I will check on some of these.

I realize that Porter and Best Machine are masters in their craft but how much will it benefit me to ship an old set of 906 heads across the country when I just need a performance valve job with stock valve sizes? No CNC porting. No gasket matching, etc. Perhaps if they have some rebuildable cores on hand and could just send them out? But man what's shipping alone cost for something like that let alone the cost of the pro work being performed? Anyway, hoping to find a happy medium here in semi-local shop that's somewhere between my local NAPA machine shop and say, one of the pro shops stated here. A place with a good reputation for performance work that I can drive to in two hours or so...

I didnt know Best Machine did porting? thought they sent that stuff out. Valley Head Service wow there's a name from the past, good to know they are still around.

I'm not sure if he still does but mad scientist is one of the best, if you can get him to do it. He's somewhere in the tri cities area. He's on this site from time to time.

Old iron heads can get expensive quickly. Your "performance valve job" may end up involving guide work, new valves, resurfacing... What's your budget?

Weigh a head, measure the box you'd need to ship one, go onto the UPS and FedEx web sites and you can get estimates for shipping to wherever. At least you'll have that number in advance, rather than going into shock at the drop-off counter when the shipper gives you the bad news. And, yes, I have shipped iron heads for machine work that I thought would be done better than my local options.

Are you going to be competing where teardowns for legality are the norm? Or are you building something where that doesn't really matter?

Maybe one of the Porters might just have a set of 906 head that would save shipping one way.

You could try Greg at M&S Engines, 208-263-9081.
He's in Sandpoint, ID - a few miles from me and 90 minutes NE of Spokane.
The work he's done on my Mopars has been excellent & very detail-oriented.

I probably didn't explain it very well. In the original post I said "building an engine around the concept of Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Races (PSMCDR)". So I'm building an engine around a concept of making a “stock” engine go fast, optimized, doing nothing more than carful tuning and attention to detail. I will likely never take my car to Michigan and race it in PSMCDR. So I'm not technically bound by any rules other than me wanting to stick to them.

Here's what PSMCDR says about the heads:

"Head modifications are prohibited, including, but not limited to, porting, bowl cutting, gasket matching, oversized valves, etc. Heads can be cut to help achieve the allowed compression over advertised." - LINK

And so, this is what I'm looking for. Do I “need” a pro shop to achieve this goal? Or can I find someone in driving distance that can do the required work?

There's lots of HP in a careful valve job, then there's guide clearance and spring height/pressure.

I believe it.

Are there some key question(s) one might ask a prospective machinist to find out if they’re a true head guru or not so much?

Dwayne Porter of Porter Racing Heads in Burlington, Vermont. He's specializes in F.A.S.T. (Factory Appearing Stock Tire) type builds. Great guy with an outstanding reputation. He's easy to talk to and extremely knowledgeable and skilled. Well worth the shipping. (802-951-1955)

In the context of what the OP is looking to do, I don’t look at it that way.

My experience has been, at least when it comes to factory BB and SB heads, there is no “magic” valve job that miraculously yields significant increases is flow.

However........ there are certain ways of doing things, and practices that I’ve seen implemented that end up reducing the flow of your stock heads........ and sometimes by a fair amount.

So, the “trick” VJ is primarily one that doesn’t make your heads worse than they were....... and maybe boosts the area under the curve a bit.

For this type of build it’s best to start with castings that haven’t already previously been subjected to some flow diminishing work(its often not possible to get back what was already lost......... without doing some “other than” valve job type work).

From the (semi) way back file.....

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthread...1/16-17-second-440-combos.html#Post50441

Thanks Dwayne!

The factories "blueprinted" (and cheated up) some of their magazine test cars back in the '60s. Might as well make the heads the way they "should" have been and enjoy the extra performance, even if they're still stock OEM castings.

Never mind that the PSMCDR camshaft rules are absurd; a "very popular" BB Mopar cam widely used by the participants doesn't even pass their own tech rules.