| Re: Started the car with the AFR heads last night |
Subject: Re: Started the car with the AFR heads last night by BeachBum on 2009/8/1 3:45:38 Quote:
I know what you're saying about speedy and slow builders....I'm both the fast and slow builder.... when I was younger I'd get crap done all in one weekend.... now it takes me a year. I'm lazy in my old age.  l... its not money with me, I've owned all of the expensive parts for 6 months if not longer.... I just haven't gotten the job done due to either business travel, family functions or the freakn heat in this furnace they call Texas. On the cost of AFR.... I think in reality they're an excellent deal. Most of those $ 1000 aluminum heads are as cast... thus you at the very least want somebody to go over them and clean em up before you put them on..... many will have them ported by a brandname porting house, which can easily cost what they bought the heads for and then some depending on what they had done to them.... and they "might" perform on par with the AFR heads after that, and might not. For an off the shelf aluminum ported cylinder with quality parts that really perform as well if not better than anybody's off the shelf heads, $ 1500 is a darn good deal. The Comp versions takes them into the realm of very few other cylinder head manufacturers.... All-Pro can match and maybe even exceed their perfomance, but you're going to pay "literally" over $ 3000 for them. (They quoted me $ 3500 about 2 years ago for a ported 220 set with the parts on them that I wanted) All-Pro on most castings sends them out to Professional Porting houses. Dart and Brodix both have some nice ported cylinder heads too.... Brodix has the T1 and M2 cylinder heads which I know the M2's are ported by M2 an outside porting house.... and those heads can get the job done, but even those, are another $ 300-400 above the AFR competition ports and its debatable if they could even perform as well. But, I think all of those M2's are only available in the large runner sizes..... they really don't have much that can compete against a 195 street/strip head that is already cnc ported for $ 1500...... they leave it to you to find a porter and make it happen. On a final note, probably because I am in the CNC Industry, I know and understand the cost of the CNC machines to do this porting.... depending on the job of the particular machine, most are 5 axes machines that do the porting, the 3 axes machines are primarily for stock removal..... for a good 5 axes machine, you can literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars..... thats before you tool it up. Point is, its just plain expensive.... if you have 5 CNC machines for manufacturing cylinder heads, it can easily cost you a million dollars and even more.....and they break !.... and if you think its expensive to fix a car.... wait until you get the bill for the CNC machine fix !  But, I'm all for free cylinder heads !! So Tony, listen to your customers like Dan.... I'm thinking $ 600 for comp ported heads and with mandatory rebates to previous customers would be a great policy ! :tongue: |
