I just got back from a trip to St. Louis last night. My family is out of town for Thanksgiving and I was sitting around the house today looking on the internet. I found an ad for some old Ford parts about 20 minutes away. I drove over and picked up these aluminum Edelbrock heads and Weiand dual carb intake and linkage. I didn't see any cracks or damage on anything. I think they will clean nice. I paid $300 for everything. I'm still gathering parts for my 41 ford coupe while I work on my 50 Dodge Coronet. Did I do ok?
No broken fins....what do the other sides look like ? I think they're cool. I would have paid less if wall deco-raters.....but if they clean up well....I can see 300 as pretty fair. Sheeesh, two heads and an intake. I almost have that in my mower engine.
Just the Weiand and linkage should be worth close to $300 by themselelves.You can still buy the same Edelbrocks new for close to $600, so I would say you did ok if the heads are "junk" and well to very well if the heads are useable.
Thanks for the comments. I was pretty excited to get them. What do I need to look for to determine if the heads are good? Thanks
check the combustion chamber sides for any electroylysis damage, I just replaced a set of heads on my flathead because the aluminum was eaten away between the water passage and piston relief in the head.
I'm not sure what I'm looking at but I see some rough spots. Can they be welded and machined or otherwise repaired, or are they wall hangers?
I agree with John, around here you'd pay that for the heads. Actually I see them going for more than that for used heads. I'd say good score!!
Those don't look too bad to me. There doesn't seem to be any bad corrosion between the water passages and combustion chambers. The amount of corrosion in the chambers them selves is problematic, though. I would clean them up, check them for warpage, and check the combustion chamber volume. Also, if someone on here has some new (or close to it) Edelbrock heads, perhaps they could measure the diameter of the area over the piston so you could compare it so see if they were milled too much previously. One thing in your favor is that they look like nobody has cleaned them up so they are pretty much virgins. As for myself, I will pay up to $500 for a set of used vintage heads that pass my kind of rigorous inspection (flat, no broken fins and not over cut). These things are getting scarce, and the new ones seem to be going up on price every day. In the end, $300 for that stuff is a good deal.
whew! they look pretty rough, looks like some deep pitting but maybe my eyes are old. not sure if they are runnable w/o cleaning, I would clean em in a sugar sand cabinet and see what you have when done.
Might be interesting getting the plugs out of that one head. If you can get them out without doing damage to the head, I think you did real good.
I would be very careful when removing those spark plugs A good soaking in strong penetrate oil for a spell may help. If you just crank them on out of there the threads in the heads may well pull out or disintegrate. Dissimilar metals and electrolysis would be my concern.
I paid good money for a set of rare heads that looked better than those. Then after I blasted the undersides the corrosion was much more evident. You will need to blast yours to determine if they are any good. Mine will need welding before they can be used.
Well I got the plugs out with no problem. Soaked them with some Marvel mystery oil and put some force on the ratchet. The threads all still look good. My question is Does anybody machine the undersides of these heads to clean up the damage? I would think someone had a program to clean these up on a CNC.
Before you do any machining, you should check the piston clearance on them. You can do this with clay (some guys prefer aluminum foil). The general consensus is to shoot for .050 piston clearance for maximum efficiency. At this point, you don't really know if the heads need to be re-domed or surfaced. There are plenty of threads here and on the Ford Barn about proper piston clearance
I've looked at a TON of old flathead heads, many have been milled a lot (you can tell because the dome area gets smaller the more you mill/surface them). These heads may look a bit rough, but I don't think they've been milled before - which is great. Before you mill them, check the height of the center of the dome area - typically about .187 or so. Also, take a air grinder with sandpaper rolls and clean out all the valve areas, dome areas, etc.. In about 4 - 6 hours you can have the combustion areas really clean and smoothed out. It is best to do this BEFORE you mill them as you don't need to worry about the air grinder getting away from you and leaving 'pecker tracks' on your nicely milled heads. Also, when you have them milled, have the machine shop really checkout the plug threads (and the temp-gauge/hose threads) - sometimes they're damaged or quite stripped - so if they need to have steel inserts (no helicoils in spark plug threads) put in, good time to get it done when the heads are in the shop. Lastly, have them 'spot face' the top 'washer pads' - cleans them up, helps with torque readings and gets things ready to rock. You did well - a fine day of HotRod prospecting! B&S
I'll go so far as to say don't even bead blast them until you know exactly what you have. As I said before, they look pretty much untouched, so make sure what you have before you do anything extreme to them. Check for warpage, bad corrosion, and combustion chamber volume before you start gutting them. Also, check prices for new heads (figure in tax and shipping) so you know what you are dealing with.
But, he won't know how deep that corrosion goes until he blasts them. It's like a cancer, it finds a spot and eats away at the aluminum in that spot (usually right next to the water ports). It won't show until it's blasted off as it builds a kind of crust which looks like gray aluminum. There is no use milling them for flatness if he will need to have spots welded up to repair corrosion.
if you do screw up the plug threads, there are repair kits available to remedy that--inserts that are installed much like heli-coils. hope it works out for you.
A further word of caution with used aluminium heads is hardness or lack thereof. If the heads have been over-heated at some time the aluminium may have softened. It would be a good idea to have them hardness tested by a reputable cylinder head reconditioning shop. If they are too soft they are a bit like a big block of cheese. You will never be able to maintain cylinder head nut tension. You will always be winding the nuts down and suffer head gasket leakage problems.
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