Head Work
Featured above is Nick holding one of the cylinder heads that was taken care of by Impastato Racing Engines which moved to 26 mile and Gratiot area and is no longer at its old home on 15 mile here in the Metro Detroit area. The shop is owned and operated by one man who I would highly recommend to anyone looking for some quality work. Email me if you would like more informations about Impastato. Notice the 3100 behind Nick on the right? It's kinda dark but it's there, on it's tire. The 3400 got the engine stand.
I took my 3400 heads right off of the engine and dropped them off just like they look in the picture above, accept a little dirtier. For $220 the cost of disassembly, cleaning, inspection, 5 angle valve job, and reassembly was included. For another $20 I got new valve seals from the dealer. For another $300 I had the bowls polished. As Vince told me, speaking from his 20+ years of experience with head work, if you could increase flow rates through the heads 100%, then 75% of that is achieved by polishing the bowls. Its about the most basic thing that can be done too, the first step. The ports were not touched, that time. In the future they will be portmatched to the lower intake and polished. At no extra charge I also had the springs shimmed slightly. In simple terms, its like putting a washer under the valve spring. What this does is compress the spring slightly more, obviously. It can give you a little boost sometimes, and if your springs are a little old it's actually recommended to put a little "pep" back into them that probably has worn out over the years.
Again, I can't say what type of results in performance are a direct result of what I had done to the heads. One thing is for sure though, this is not something that would have hindered performance.