alright, i have been putting a lot of thought into what i am going to get for my new engine build.. but im so confused on things

i was at the drag's a few days ago, and i was looking at the heads people use, it seemed to be dominated by dart and brodix heads.. i have seen some people talk bad about brodix.. are they really bad?

i like dart heads a lot.. and i was also looking at AFR, but i have never seen a racer use AFR heads before, which concerned me

i think with this build (400 SBC that will be bored 20 over) im going to go MAX street, basically i want a car that will perform great at the track, yet have a bit of street mannors

im looking at aluminum heads and 11.6:1 comp pistons so i can still run pump gas

im not too sure what to get though.. CNC 227 intake runner dart heads, or regular pro1 heads, same thing goes for AFR, and im not too sure what brodix offers

im pretty sure i will be putting 4 bolt mains on the engine for the added security

what is the highest safe rpm for a gm 400ci engine with the 4 bolt splayed caps?

this is going to mainly be a street car, and i know you guys are sick of me saying this, but i do not care about street manners, i want it to be MEAN, if i can put it in gear and drive to the parts store or gas station i will be happy, but let me say it, this will not be my daily driver. the car will almost never be driven

the car was driven before on a little 302, single plane intake 230 duration comp cam @50 with.. get this.. 2.73 gears.. now if that is possible almost anything can be, it had no problems spinning the tires when it wanted to.. on what i am assuming was a stock torque converter

now, for my application, what would be better, a solid or hydraulic roller cam, or even a solid/hydraulic flat tappet cam?

it will be a very long process but i want to do everything right the first time, i dont want to fool around and trying to mix/match parts until i can find a good combo

i would prefer a single plane intake though

i was looking at cams, and i found this one: http://www.compcams.com/Cam_Specs/Ca...?csid=310&sb=2

could i go a bit meaner, is there another one that will fit my application?

im willing to put lower gears and a high stall converter to be able to make it meaner and still drive on the street

what do you guys think?? im starting to lean towards money doesnt matter (as long as it is acceptable.. i dont want to pay $10,000 for heads) but rather getting what i want and spending double the time putting the engine together

I'm not an expert at all and I'm in the same exact situation you are in but my plan is for a 383 stroker. I've looked at ALL heads and compared flow numbers for all that I could find (similarly priced) and I've concluded that the 227 AFR Eliminator (Competition) heads have the best flow numbers out of the box. I don't know if companies like to "inflate" their numbers though so I take everything with a grain of salt.

I've been playing with Desktop Dyno 2003 and using different heads with different cams...so many combination's that it made my head spin. Some had high top end HP and almost no low end at all and some were the opposite, torque monsters. I've come up with a few that were just right though. Comp Cams also has a program which is exactly like DD03 (minus a few features because I have the pro tools version) that can help you out and determine a few things. Here is the link for CamQuest if you want it, it's free. http://compcams.com/camquest/default.asp


Edit: the numbers I get from desktop dyno are different from the camquest by the way. I "built" a similar engine in each with the same exact specs and camquest gave me about 100HP more than DD03, so just be aware of that.

I ran your setup in DD03 with a 800 cfm carb and single plane manifold with the AFR heads and this is what I got:

thanks a lot, it seems my combo makes max hp really high in the rpm's, same with torque

how accurate is this program? i have camquest, and i found it to not be very accurate HP rating wise

I should hope that DD03 is a bit closer to the real numbers considering the price of the program. Like I said earlier though, CamQuest gave me different and higher numbers than DD03.