Well....... that seemed worth doing

I have a set of pre-Edelbrock made MP aluminum Hemi heads in the shop.
They’re going to be used on a stroker build going in a clone car with exhaust manifolds.

The builder wanted it to have decent power, and the original plan(prior to seeing the heads) was just a valve job and bowl blend.
I mean...... they’re Hemi heads....... should be pretty good, right?

Well, after taking them apart and cleaning them up(used heads), and seeing/feeling how rough the interior walls of the ports were...... the decision was made to just “smooth out” the walls and trim down the guide bosses a bit, along with opening what ended up being rather small bowls, and recutting the seats.

If the flow numbers are any indication....... it definitely seemed to be worth the effort...... especially considering that it’s only getting a mid-.500 lift cam.

Here’s the ootb flow: 28” test pressure, 2.25” flow tube on exhaust

Lift ———in/ex
.100 —— 83/58
.200 ——160/136
.300 ——232/195
.400 ——276/221
.500 ——294/225
.550 ——299/226
.600 ——303/226
.650 ——305/226
.700 ——307/226
.750 ——309/226


Here’s how they looked from MP:

Waiting for the 400+ numbers.

First step was recutting the valve seats, along with a bowl cut for the intake side.
Starting with the intake side, I blended away the ridge that was left from the factory bowl cut, and opened the intake bowl enough to have a smooth transition into the port walls, and then trimmed away a good portion of the rather chunky guide boss.
Then smoothed out that work with an old dull carbide. No eye candy sanding rolls for this job.
The two walls, the roof and the floor really didn’t get “opened up” at all. I just ground away the rough casting surface, and finished it off with the dull carbide.
There was a noticeable step where the seat insert met the floor at the SSR, and I made sure that was a nice smooth transition, and made the SSR itself slightly more gradual.

A very similar situation went on with the exhaust port, only more time was spent trying to improve the SSR, since it’s pretty abrupt as it comes as cast.

The fresh VJ and porting yielded these results:
(These are nothing all that fantastic for Hemi heads, but it was a very nice gain (imo), with a pretty modest gain in runner size)

Lift——-—in/ex
.100 —— 80/57
.200 ——166/132
.300 ——237/202
.400 ——310/253
.500 ——351/257
.550 ——357/262
.600 ——355/264
.650 ——357/266
.700 ——359/268
.750 ——361/270

Where these Canfield castings or another brand?

Here’s a pic of the foundry mark...... maybe if Zippy sees this thread he can shed a little light on where these were made and about how old they might be.

Also a close up of the port wall texture(they actually “feel” pretty smooth)

Very nice gain for the work done! Just goes to show that there is rarely anything ready to run out of the box and that looks like typical MP quality. Nice catch and save Dwayne, I bet the owner will be happy!

Yea, out of the box he was set to get stomped by seemingly lesser motors.

That is AWESOME !!!! Thanks for sharing Dwayne

I’m sure there were numerous 528” MP crate Hemis built with heads that were just like these.

Reworked like these are, and then step up from the MP 292 hyd cam to a nice suitable SFT cam....... I bet the difference in power would be pretty substantial.

That would make for a fun dyno test.

Its funny you mentioned that, there is id call it like a pro street cuda in the hood here with a big MP crate hemi, hes never beat my small block stroker street racer, or many others really, im probably 2.5 seconds quicker in the 1/4 but he has knocked the main bearings out of the bottom end trying.

I should ask if he ever looked at his heads?

Hes been beat so much hes not brought it out in a year and a half. It just sits.

Dwayne I agree, it should really make much better power, at 1st when I read how much improvement you made without EXTENSIVE work it reminded me of some old Merlin BBC iron heads I worked on when I was 1st starting out doing port work, basic bowl clean up, Valve job & I got about the same results of improvement as you did on the Hemi heads, I was so exited, I was bragging to my boss & he then asked me,,, Did you forget to put a spark plug in that cyl for the test,,, well, you know the answer LOL OOOPSS

Very Nice !....have you ever thought about doing this for a living

Another before/after shot:

That looks great, those heads sure looked like crap before, are these going to be dyno tested when you are done ?

Looks like MP was trying to duplicate the burr finish that some of the head porters use these days?

I’m not building the motor, but I believe that plan is to dyno it.
It’s going in a driver with ex manifolds, so the cam is pretty tame.
I’m pretty sure it’ll be running the stock type intake manifold.

I really have no feel for what it’ll make in that configuration........ other than, not as much as it could.

They sure felt more like the gravel in my driveway than any type of burr finish.

Even the coarse non-ferrous burrs I was using to rough in the ports left a smoother feeling finish that how these were as cast.

The odd part is....... the roughness was really confined to the inside of the ports.
The exterior of the heads is much smoother.

I’m pretty sure the 58cfm gain at .550 lift will pay some dividends.

I could never figure out the foundry those 110-Ms came from. I tried like heck to find the RC marking on other parts and failed. Maybe someone who knows casting really well would be able to identify that. At the time I wasn't trained on the Reynolds and Reynolds/RUMBA green screens to find all the suppliers, and depended on other folks to look that info up.

In normal old world MP fashion (using basically the same logic as paint marks which usually failed to identify cams) they weren't date coded. The only indication of a rough date of manufacture was on the box, or the yellow sticker on the crate engine they came on.

I do know the 110-Ms actually had two machine shops at the end of their run, which I thought was weird.
Cummins recon did their machining in-house for crate engines, and the parts heads had somewhere else.
Say what you will about Cummins recon (And you would be right), but the seats pretty much never fell out of crate engine heads. I can't defend them as they had other issues besides that, but they did get that one detail right.
If anyone is lucky enough to have never heard of this rightfully earned folklore, you're very fortunate to have not wasted any time on it LOL.

When 110-M's were phased out I hoarded a few sets, some with more issues than others.
Some are in beautiful shape, some have issues that required welding, and I bet you can guess the rest.
I didn't use them and went with Victor Jr instead, this thread helps explain some of the reasons why LOL.
That stuff I collected will probably get sold cheap to someone local.

You know, I am going to act like an old guy and point at history for a minute.
I'm pretty sure 300cfm @ .600 was probably considered outrageous and amazing airflow....................in 1964.
From that perspective, they kinda do what they are supposed to do.
They're like a stock replacement head in aluminum, sort of.
Well, the iron heads were never that ugly but I'm talking from a functional standpoint.

From a modern perspective,110-Ms basically HAVE TO be ported and well prepped... preferably by a pro...to stand a chance at keeping up. Having Porter Racing heads go through them was definitely a good move.

Zippy, I had the understanding that the latest aluminum heads sold by MP with standard valve sizes were “fixed”, meaning they had no issues as the earlier ones did. Date codes on the packages were around 2012-2014 I think. Have you heard this or not so?

I had Edelbrock made MP Hemi heads in the shop a few years prior to 2012....... so it would seem the heads like in the pics should have been out of inventory by then.

Zippy, you’re correct on the stock iron head flow. Original, unmodified 559 heads flow in that 300cfm range.

Funny thing....pretty much everything I had access to that was tested either at the CTC airflow lab or at Arrow racing engines matched up (within a handful of CFM) to flow numbers you've posted, fast68plymouth. I remember noticing that and going "well, it's basically like a lightweight stock head then."

The transition from the 110-M to the Edelbrock-manufactured 110-M1 (someone had a sense of humor with the casting number) began slowly in the 2008 to 2009 range under the same management regime I worked under/same one that replaced the megablock with the world block and did alot of other good, but because these parts don't exactly fly off the shelves and not much of anything was really advertised.... not everyone noticed the 110-Ms had been replaced. Took awhile for word to get out.

Edelbrock layed the option of a higher flowing head on the table, but my management decided to stay with something close to oem replacement. I'd have to guess nobody was ready to open that can of worms.

Don't forget..... MP used to get yelled at all the time by non-racers, for things like 509 cams being used in otherwise 100% stock vehicles (which brought on the wide LSA version, better idle but kind of a dog, and a poor seller), Hemi blocks with wedge motor mounts ("now my exhaust won't fit! thanks alot, pal!")......The last thing anyone needed to hear was "where did all my torque go? I put your $3000 heads with giant intake runner volume on my stock 426, and........"

Looks like the first set of Ede made castings I saw were in 2/09.
They were bought as bare castings, and came without the seats done.

After honing the guides and cutting the seats, but with no blending at all, the big number @.750 lift was 316.

I haven’t looked at any of those in a while, but my recollection is that the as cast intake guide boss is much less intrusive in that Ede made head than the ones in this thread.

As ugly as these were to start with, I think they’re going to work out pretty good now.

Nice results!

They look very similar to my iron heads ootb. Similar #'s after porting as well.

F

Zippy - for reference - the part number is P5153875, package date 3/31/14.

There was a pallet of these at Sherwood back around 2016, I think about a 125 of them.

The “P515” Hemi heads are Edelbrocks(at least, all of the P515 heads I’ve had here have been Edelbrocks).

Plain white Edelbrock box with foam clamshell inside, and the MP label on the end.

The heads in this thread are P4876857.

So Dwayne - based on your experiences - no issues with these P5153875 heads ?

P5153875 is the head I referred to earlier as Edelbrock or 110-M1 (casting number).
Please accept my apology for assuming awareness of that.

It’s predecessor P4876857 was 110-M Casting number, the main topic of the thread.

Yes, 110-M1s are definitely fixed. We didn’t hear of any more catastrophic failures when they came online.
However, to be fair....although the new head was a better quality part,it was not really a higher performing part OOTB. Flow wise, it's not far from it's predecessor...It flows just barely more than stock. The quality improvement made the change worthwhile, though (and opened the door to the Edelbrock Victor Jr when MP turned down that product).

I had to scrounge a little bit this was the oldest 110-M1 specimen that
I remember seeing....hopefully the packaging date is visible. The head itself is long gone
To a customer but the box ended up being used to move office stuff, and I still have it.
At the time this head was shipped, mp was actually selling both new and old, if I remember correctly.
I remember the transition to the new part happening later, and slower than I would have liked.
I’m still going to say 2008 was the real changeover timeframe because it took quite awhile to be completed.

I bought a new set of those and used them on two versions of 472" Hemi builds . The first was 11:1 with .600" solid cam, Indy 426-2 / 950 Demon and the second a .525 " FTH cam , and I changed it 9.25:1 factory type dual quad.two 600 Eddy carbs for a show poodle car when I sold it. Neither version made the power I was looking for. Only About 20 hp difference between the two versions. I guess the iron heads would have been better for OTB use.

Mark

Agreed.
The P515 head is just a nicer made product, even if it doesn’t really make much(if any) more power.

Hello,

Did you by chance CC intake runner volume after porting?

I didn’t cc them before or after.

It was really one of those iiwii type of porting jobs.
There was no target flow number I was shooting for....... I just knew the 300-ish they were as they came to me wasn’t what the builder was looking for.

As I said previously, before seeing them, the plan was a valve job and a bowl blend.
I could have still done that, but they’re building a pretty nice stroker.......and I made a judgement call that the motor could probably take advantage of a little more flow.

Gotcha, thanks.

I doubt I took 10cc’s out of the intake ports.