What kinds of motors will the porcupine heads work on? I want to use them on my 427 BBC. How good are these heads?

The only "porcupine heads" I've ever heard of were made for special built 69 302's for use in the Transam circuit. There were about 6 pairs of them built and you have to match them to their intake manifolds (cross ram) because the intake and exhaust runners are not in the same order as "normal" small blocks. They run E,I,E,I,E,I,EI instead of the normal E,I,I,E,E,I,I,E pattern, so the engine also requires a custom camshaft. I beleive a member of this board has a set or two, as does the owner of Pete Estes 68 convertible Z28.

My buddy has a original 65 Big Block corvette. It has a 396 with "Porcupine Heads". I think they were a close chamber, big valve, rectangle port head.

Matt

The term " porcupine" refers to the canted valve configuration charactoristic to all big block chevy engines. The Corvette in question came with an L78 396. The heads on that engine were the Hi-Perf square port heads.

All big-block heads are referred to as "porcupine" heads due to the differing angles between the intake and exhaust valves. The ultra-rare experimental 302 heads referred to above were known as "semi-hemi" heads. graemlins/thumbsup.gif

And the ones JohnZ's talking about are like the "splayed valve, mini-BB" SB heads, but are modern, that can be bought, I think over the counter now..

pdq67