I checked out the thread in the link....... Some pics there.
Heads look real nice.

I see all kinds of flow numbers. Pictures of pretty ports. My heads are an old set hand ported -1's by Jeff at MCH long long ago. I touched the valves myself at my buddy's shop. No flow numbers. The runner walls look a little wobbly. I do know that the 572 with 2 eddy carbs on a cross ram it's been 9.04@149 at 3350lbs. How much do they flow? how much power? I can only guess. But I'm happy with the results. You never know until it hits the track.
Doug

I read through that whole thread on FABO....... It's interesting how the opinions on how to "fix" that guys motor vary so widely.

Supposedly, the motor should have been back on the dyno with the BPE heads this week....... No results yet.

i have read the thread on FABO too. waiting very patiently for the results to be posted.

I looked through some old dyno sheets I had.

I did some SB RPM heads for a guy about 15 years ago.
He was having some troubles getting the car to run what it "should" with the ported heads and new cam.
He fought with it one season, the car didn't seem to respond to anything. He was looking for solid 10's and it was stuck in the 11-teens.

The motor had never been dynoed........ so I told him, before you spend more $$$$ on the motor, pull it out and get it dynoed.
The combo he had "should" have made 575hp, and if it did, the car should be solidly in the 10's.
He couldn't seem to find anyone in his area that was set up to test Mopars, so he ended up shipping it to me.
He sent his headers, carb, timing light, etc.

I put it on the dyno, warmed it up, set the timing where he said he was running it......... and on the first pull it made 576hp.
The reason the car wouldn't run the number was not a problem with the motor.

He had sent a new carb to tune, and after playing with that a bit it ended up making 587hp.

He swapped out a few suspect parts in the car, got a new converter, had the trans done.......and iirc, it was running 10.60's first time out the next season.

Anyway, that was 2003 when I tested it(heads were done in 2001 or 2002).
280cfm RPM heads, 419ci, Victor intake, 1050 carb, 1-7/8x3.5 headers, 264/268-108 roller, 1.5 rockers......... 544tq @4900, 587hp @6400.

I see there are some results from the dyno test of the BPE heads over on Fabo.

For me......with what has been posted over there so far.......I have more questions than answers.

^ ha, yeah. I wish he would've flowed them before installing them.

That thread is too long to go back and check for sure, but i think his only changes were the heads and the hughes rockers that he had replaced because the first ones weren't giving him a true 1.6 rocker ratio. he bought the bpe heads bare and installed the hardware from his edelbrock heads that hughes cnc'd. he sent the cam back to bullit but i think he got in touch with them soon enough to actually not have them regrind the thing.

i had a suspicion when he didn't post for days that something weird might've happened.

interestingly, his peaks with the BPE heads were almost exactly the same as the 586hp combo you spoke of in your post up there ^^^

He called me and said he was going to take them over to Toms to get them flow tested after getting bitten before. Maybe Tom was busy too.

I just find it really odd that it made, as he put it, "waaay less" than it did with the RPM heads.

A few years ago(4-5) I built a very basic bracket 416 for a friend on mine.
Bowl blended RPM's, super victor, old school 850, easy-on-parts flat tappet cam, ductile 1.5 rockers.........even that thing made just over 560hp.

It's like ....... 560hp from that combo is(should be) a slam dunk........and now it's making less with the new heads??

I guess one thing in particular about the BPE heads that surprises me is, it doesn't appear they did any testing of those heads on the dyno vs the other stuff they are competing with.
If they did, it doesn't seem like it's common knowledge.

Since I know both Rod and Vic are "small block guys" I just assumed they would have been all over some back to back dyno testing.

Like I said........ more questions than answers.

I will say this....... it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out there was some other "issue" that was contributing to the disappointing outcome.........and that some similar head swap test in the future ends up yielding different results.

WOW i'm surprised.

I have no hard facts as to whether they did or didn't........just the feeling I got based on what was posted over there.

Wonder if the results have something to do with just..... ' using the hardware from the Hughes heads".
From what I understand, Brett developed the port, digitized it, Bischoff cnc'ed the heads and put his valve job on them.
That's extremely elite couple of guys.
I suspect more to this than has thus far met the eye.

Prior to the head swap, there was a lot of talk about retarding the cam.

I wonder if that plan got implemented with the new head install.

I wish he would just post the sheet over there. Hard to analyze it really without seeing a few of the numbers, curves, etc.
His words "waaay less"........ How much less is that? 5hp?10hp?25hp?

When it was apparent that the numbers werent going to come around....... Was any type of troubleshooting done while it was on the dyno?
Play with the lash, cranking compression, try a dominator on it, etc

We did a street/strip 408 last year. Pretty mild pump gas deal...... Owner wanted "500hp+".

10.5cr, .600 roller, bowl blended RPM's, std victor, QFT 850.
Made 540hp.

So, the question in my mind is....... On a mild build like that...... If you just swapped out the heads for the BPE 205's....... Would it pick up?
Or, does it need to be "more" of a motor to make them work?

Anyone know what the intake runner volume is for the Hughes full CNC non-big mouth?
The guy who did the head swap had the Hughes heads flowed and they made it to 300cfm.
If the BPE's flow similarly, but have a larger cross section and runner volume, might be a situation where they're "too big" for the application.
Although I doubt this is really the case. A 205cc head is still pretty small on a 400+ cube build.
I'm just "thinking out loud".

Tho owner says same cam, same ICL.

He kinda says "everything" is the same, but never specifically says the cam is installed at the same c/l.

Plus, no cranking pressure test for either set of heads.

It's a pretty long thread over there, lots of info to go through.....
I know it's a Bullet cam...... And I thought I saw it was an UltraDyne grind.
If it's the old UD .4176 lobes...... Those aren't really "tight lash" lobes, and I see on the dyno sheet from the original post they had the lash at .016/.018.
When I ran those cams, I used .026/.026.
Might have helped perk up that missing low end TQ.

When I ran those cams, I used .026/.026.
Might have helped perk up that missing low end TQ.


WOW!!!!!! You ran that much cold with aluminum heads???

I always set the lash hot.

I checked my old UD lobe profile sheet....... Those .4176 lobes are listed as .026 lash with a 1.5 RR.
If you were trying to have the 0 lash point be the same going from the 1.5 to 1.6, then the lash would need to grow almost another .002.

If I had seen the TQ was so soft at under 4500rpm, I definitely would have tried loosening the lash from the .016/.018 they were running.

The basic bracket motor I did a few years ago was making about 100ft/lbs more at 4000, with the same intake and a flat tappet cam with a little more duration than the roller he's using.

A little more "Monday morning armchair quarterbacking".....

The owner of that engine says he was only looking for 575hp, and with a spacer under the carb it was at 567hp with the Hughes heads(560hp without).

I really think with some more testing of intakes, carbs, headers, that 575hp mark could have been exceeded without resorting to a head swap.
Granted, I wasnt there, and don't know how extensively they pursued it....... But as close as they were, I think it could have been done.

One example....... The owner said they couldn't fit any spacer on that SV manifold in the car.
But what they tried was 7hp.
Perhaps a std Victor with a nice port job and a spacer might have been a little better?

When you're building a new combo and it doesn't do what you want, sometimes you have to hunt for the missing power.

Like I said....... Just more speculating on my part.

^ agreed, and i think they might find the power with the BPE heads too. any major parts swap is going to require some fiddling.

one of the things the guy was bummed about though, seemed to be he felt the torque was soft in the lower rpm's. i think he was hoping to get to ~575hp and also pick up the torque curve a little too.
With all the dogging on the short side radius on the Hughes heads, I think everyone was confident the BPE heads were going to pick up power through the whole curve, as those heads were quite different in the SSR.

I saved that thread and will try to read it this weekend but if he had that super Victor on it and it was unported they suck. I got one in a package deal and it took a lot of porting work to get it top work for me. I modified an Indy intake to work on my 408 and when I tried it I was sucking oil from the intake valley and didn't have time to address the issue (double gaskets MAY have fixed it) so I had to throw the Super Victor on. My Duster ended up running a 9.73 with my Edelbrock heads and the Super Victor but I'm betting it wouldn't have been in the 9's out of the box. I'll take a regular Victor 340 intake over it any day of the week.