I figured some of ya'll might be interested in my 'lil project:
There is a guy in California named Russ Arao who created a 32V head for pushrod engines. Basically the system works by using a shaft rocker system with "forked" rockers. Each pushrod that would normally actuate 1 valve is now able to actuate 2 valves. Here is the website for the heads:
www.araoengineering.com
And here are some links to picts of my heads:
http://members.aol.com/Fredrick518/Photos/Domin01.jpg http://members.aol.com/Fredrick518/Photos/Domin02.jpg http://members.aol.com/Fredrick518/Photos/Domin03.jpg http://members.aol.com/Fredrick518/Photos/Domin04.jpg http://members.aol.com/Fredrick518/Photos/Domin05.jpg http://members.aol.com/Fredrick518/Photos/Domin06.jpg
Anywho, I bought a completely disassembled engine from a guy who needed to sell a few toys. The engine consisted of a .030 over LT1 block converted over to 4 bolt splayed main caps, a Lunati 3.875 stroke crank, Lunati 5.875 rods, and Lunati pistons. I also got a custom ground Cam Dynamics roller cam speced to work w/ the 32V heads, and of course I got the heads. My orig intention was to build this engine for a 94 Trans Am I had at the time. But as time went by I changed cars quite a few times, and the engine parts basically sat around. I did have quite a bit of work done to the block, such as adding a piston oiling system, a main stud girdle, having the block fully detailed, adding deck plugs, then having the block decked and squared, etc. I also sold the Lunati rods, and replaceed them with a set of Carrillo rods. In any high end project I do I always use Carrillos.
So...the engine parts are sitting around, and little by little the 32V heads become somewhat of an internet legend. There are "supposed" to be other sets of them around, and I def know of one other set in Texas. But to this day they are an unproven item. Now, ownership of these heads has allowed me to have some pretty interesting conversations with some pretty awesome automotive types. I became pretty good friends with a world class engine building team in New York, and they showed heavy interest in the heads. The team is Bauer Racing, a father and son duo. The father {Jon} is a mechanical engineer who worked for GM and was involved with the orig. GTO, and the son {Brett} is an absolute genius with every aspect of engine building. Plus he is whacked in the head enough to want to take on a project like mine! So, a couple of weeks ago I packed up my stuff and drove out to their shop. Well, needless to say I was very impressed. They have a full line machine shop, and they do everything from knocking out a gear for farmer Brown's tractor, to mega high tech military and racing stuff. So, if anything is deemed "not up to spec" with these heads, the machine shop will be utalized to created whatever is needed to bring them up to spec.
The current plan is to do some mega R&D on the heads, to formulate an engine configuration. Right now Brett is on a bit of a vacation, but his vacation is consisting of visiting some high line shops he deals with for head porting. He is going to look for the max flow numbers that can be extracted from the heads {right now the intakes are flowing .343 CFM @ .500 lift}, and what will need to be done to get the big numbers. He did a computer sim of the engine and he got over 800 HP w/o any power adders. So, the potential is def there, it just needs a plan to bring that potential out!
I'm def looking toward having 1000 HP, prolly with a Procharger supercharger as the power adder. This project is going to def be off the charts, but it is aways what I wanted. Â*8)