[eschaider]

OP, I would give a fair amount of consideration to Brent (blykins) commentary. He has been building these things for a long time. The preference(s) he has expressed do not imply a 100% build behavior pattern for all builds of a particular type. What the preferences do express is the potential for an unpleasant outcome when certain component combinations are used in a build.

When you come to a forum like this one you will find some folks with very deep experience roots and of course others not so much. Many of the owners on this site that have gone through engine rebuilds have done it not because they were consciously making a decision to step up their build (in fairness some were) but more often than not because of a component or entire engine failure — just read the rebuild threads.

Brent is sharing his experience that amounts to orders of magnitude more engine builds for these cars than the most prolific non professional builder (that means guys like us). Most owners, even the very unlucky, do less than three or four rebuilds. When we begin to look at aftermarket castings like blocks and heads the aftermarket manufacturers simply do have the production volume necessary for quality Detroit had to have to keep up with sales demand back in the 60's while managing component failures and the associated warranty expense to a minimum.

Although we have 50 years of casting technology advancements behind us today, the biggest bugaboo is simply the short production runs associated with specialty shop unit volumes that have none of the production QC systems large Detroit OEMs like Ford use. Even worse if they did have them, the production runs are too short to make use of them.

In the end, the guy who writes the checks for the parts and work is, in actual fact, the ultimate decider at least in terms of build direction. Being the ultimate decider however does not make the check writer correct — it only makes him the ultimate decider. He is still subject to the same frailties, foibles, poor judgement and marketing hype that the rest of us are. Guys like Brent can save your bacon and your checkbook.

The fact that you solicit opinions as to the most prudent build path is good. All opinions however do not carry the same weight. Additionally, and this is deceptively easy to do (remember the foibles stuff?), if you come to the opinion solicitation table with a preconceived notion of what is right and what is wrong, looking for opinions to support that preconceived notion, you are doing yourself (and your checkbook) a disservice.

BTW if you haven't looked at the BBM FE cylinder heads you really ought to. They dispensed with the old 60's shovel style wedge chamber and used a modern, shallow, scalloped, high swirl chamber that works better with today's fuels. The porting and valve seats are to die for quality. The entire head is a step or more above the best FE heads available today — and the casting quality is 2017 large OEM quality.

In full disclosure they are made outside the US in Korea. Along with that it is worth noting the folks who do the casting are the ones that produced the complex high quality work for Hundai. It is extremely difficult to get a foundry of that size to build limited production heads and blocks of that caliber for a small market like ours especially if you limit your search to US foundries.

Brent has seen the heads and I think the blocks also. You ought to solicit his opinion — it is valuable. He has already been where you are about to go and he has been there more times than you ever will. The dog he has in this fight is looking for happy customers, without returns because it drives referral business and reputation.

Parting thought;

Imagine for a moment you're at an airport and as your plane begins to board there is an airline employee, at the gate, offering parachutes for $10. In fairness he advises you that they are only necessary in less than 50% of the flights. Do you want to fly on that plane?

— just saying ...


Ed