Was helping a friend tear down an old school 355 w/W-2 heads and W-2 Victor intake and noticed that the outer upper edge was pretty thin where it mated to the heads like it had been milled at a different angle to fit properly. They are the rectangular port heads and was wondering if this is something that was done very often maybe since parts weren't readily available? Was an Ed Hamberg build

Mitch

W2 only came in an oval port configuration. Some drag racers opened the ports to a rectangle to maximize port area and flow. The head may have been angle milled/faced on the deck surface and then the intake would need to be matched to the tilted head intake face. I think the angle decking is to improve the pushrod angle geometry.

Thanx! That makes sense

That would be an old build if it was one of Hamburger's...
Wonder what the history of that engine is?

Was in a blue 71 Duster that was purchased in Florida around 83-84 by a friend but I'm not sure whether Ed just sold the motor or if he built the whole car, Its a 355 ci X block w/huge roller cam & from what I remember It made crazy horse power on the dyno. He just wanted the driveline for a Duster he had and I ended up with the car but I sold it a few years later

Glidden had several sets made by Diamond for his Arrow. Had a set at one time and they flowed some impressive numbers for back then.

Glidden was the point man for the W2 stuff; Hamburger was primarily working Stock & SS, though there was 1 Duster (the Hamburger & Sweitzer car) that ran outside of that realm in B/SM.
I've tracked down all of the early Dusters except that one (distinguished by large (long) wheel openings) and one of the '74s, which was white and usually referred to as the Hall Of Fame car.
The rest were blue & white in that diagonal scheme.
I'm really curious about the car in FL !

I heard a W2 story told to me a long time ago (20 years +) from Butch Elkins. He told me that at one time they got into the foundry where they were casting W2 heads, and rubbed all of the sand cores to increase the wall thickness on the intake ports. This allowed them to be ported huge and changed from oval port to square port.

Competing teams caught wind of the square port success and gathered up regular castings of their own... only to find that every time they tried to make it a square port they kept breaking through the walls of the port!!! They were really frustrated, and couldn't understand how Butch and team were able to do it, but they couldn't make it work.

Hard to say if these are of the same vintage as that story, but very well could be...

Look at the push rod area and see if the push rod area has been opened up..
usually (at least on my 3 sets of W-2s)if they have been opened up the that
area will show it if it has 3/8"PRs.. if not they are most likely angle cut.. one
of my sets was cut to just have it match up to my intake(W-2 intake)

Long before Glidden made the switch to Mopar both Hamburger and John Deianna where involved in developing the W2 heads from original T/A castings, a friend of mine ended up with the best set Deianna had after he quit drag racing. He told us when we picked up all the parts he sold us that Mopar would have him air freight the heads back to them in Detroit after every race and work on them some more, he figure they had spent nearly $10,000.00 on air freight in shipping alone BTW they where converted to oval ports, not square ports like those T/A heads where originally

There were a few out there who modified them into different configurations. I know of a Petty Enterprises 355 that was a short track motor w/W-2 heads & an LD340. It's the only one I've ever seen. But he had some good connections back in the day.

I will check out the push rod area but Im pretty sure it was angle milled because of the intake is angled pretty thin to that top edge, Florida man told my friend it was Ed and it had a tricked out thermoquad which Hamberg liked and I noticed that it has those lash full caps that cover the whole valve tip he used to sell.

Push rod clearances looks factory but may have been opened up, has aluminum MT rods that look to be 6" long, could read on the bottom of the pistons H400 040 which makes me wonder if those were chiivie pistons? Were full domes with nothing milled off, has a huge roller cam that I'm going to measure eventually, big aluminum oil pan w/solid windage tray and scraper, crank is solid w/out holes drilled threw the end throws and has small radius on the rod journals, has offset dowels for fine tuning the heads which Ed used to sell, My friend was told that it had been on a dyno and was around 600, would that be a stretch?

600 isnt a stretch at all with a smallish carb.. the solid tray is different

Yes, the windage bolts in the pan w/radius matching the crank and being pretty close w/a full length scraper, pan is set up like a truck with deep area in the rear, it feels like we opened up a time capsule and is interesting to see how they did things with limited parts in the day