Summer89

Well I kinda had some catastrophic failure to my motor that has edelbrock performer 6145 heads. Not sure if they are savable or not. But if not my friend told me to get 088 heads if I can't save them as a better cost option. Looking at the specs they seem to be very close. I'm a bit of a nube for engine specs vs power output. So what's the big difference between them? Will they be able to do the same thing depending on piston and cam set up? Also what are the 990 heads?

Tartilla

The 6145 Edelbrock heads are aluminum with 290cc int & 2.25" int valves. 110cc chambers. 1.89" exh valves.

The Edelbrock Performer RPM series heads were never known to be anything special in the flow dept.

The issues in the photos appear to be easily welded up and surface milled.

Aluminum heads are very forgiving.

The 088 heads are iron and 320cc int ports. 119cc chambers. The exh ports are very anemic. They flow as good or even worse than good sbc aftermarket exh ports.

The 088 heads came on a lot of Mercruiser Blue engines over the years, and they will perform. But the Supercharged engines will have a lot of parasitic loss pushing the exhaust out the 088 ports.

Summer89

Well that's good to know they are forgiving at least. I even lightly kissed a few valves somehow. I still have to get these to the machine shop and assess how much a rejuvenation would be. But realistically the numbers between the 2 dont seem much different to me. Am I going to notice much if any difference between the heads in the 500ish+ hp na range?

BillK

Is the damage in the picture what you are worried about ?? I dont see anything that a few minutes with a die grinder and sanding roll along with resurfacing wouldnt take care of. Certainly nothing to be considering replacing the heads.

Summer89

yes mostly. My issue is the intake valves are angled and the edge of the valve is damn near even with the deck surface already. All the pitting is going to have to be filled and resurfaced. I'm just worried about cost-wise and labor going into the heads if it's actually going to be worth rebuilding or just going with some known good 088s if they are gonna do the same thing.

BillK

I don't see anything in the pictures that would really require welding. If you said you were putting them on a brand new engine then it might be worth doing something different but if you are just patching the existing build then I wouldn't worry about them much. As long as the gasket sealing surface is ok the pitting wont really hurt anything. The dings from the broken spark plug or ring can be smoothed out. I have seen a heck of a lot worse that have run just fine for many years.

Summer89

Definitely some broken rings with some cam walk and a little lean. This is a new rebuild, so I don't want to make a mistake and leave room for hot spots in the combustion chamber or compression fluctuations. Some of those spots the almunium look like it boiled. Obviously I'm going to have these checked. I'm just weighing options.

Tartilla

You may be able to find some runner heads in the swap shop. But anything decent is going to have a larger price tag.

Rebuilding an inferior head and the costs associated is a rough one.new iron head castings are hard to come by now since covid closed many cast iron foundries.

It looks like your Edelbrocks are more of a Roval i take port than a full rectangle port.

It shouldn't take a long time at all to make a few surface passes with a tig/mig to fill in the pitting. Then a surface mill.

You could also consider a new Promaxx 290 casting at $1500 bare. Something like that. Add some valves and pit your spring package on them.

Summer89

roval intake port? They seem pretty rectangular to me. My exact heads are on Maketplace currently for 2200$ nos with valves. I wasn't going to by new 088 just some used ones. My friend just picked up a set for a few hundred and transferred his valves.
I guess it all depends how much work mine really need and if I damaged any valves.

BillK

He was very lucky if he actually did that. Seems like every time one of my customers buys a set of used heads they end up spending way too much money to make them right.