Quote:
I think we should all let Dan have the head, nobody else should bid on it and step on his toes. Right now he hears that head callin to him... Dan Buy me ,,, Daaaannnn Buuuyyyy mmeeee !!!! ....
As far as I'm concerned Dan, it's as good as yours .... Gary V.
As far as I'm concerned Dan, it's as good as yours .... Gary V.
That's right generous of you, Gary, but I don't think it's going to be that simple. If one person (me or anyone else) buys this and stashes it on his shelf or puts it in his car...then one person gets it. If we work together, think before we act, and coöperate, then we have a real opportunity here, almost certainly our only opportunity we're ever going to get, to have a relatively easy and low-cost way to bring an aluminum head with much superior combustion chamber and ports to market for everyone/anyone who wants one, and all the development work was carried out by known-good engineers at Chrysler! We will have to act in a coördinated, thoughtful and quick fashion if we're to pull this off; the auction ends in 6 days.
I've been in talks all afternoon/evening with Juan (argentina_slantsixer). He's got a foundry of known-good skill and competence lined up; they did a great deal of work for Chrysler in the '60s-'70s, and, having been told of the nature of the project, their preliminary answer is "Yes, we can reproduce this faithfully, we've done this kind of reproduction work before when tooling or blueprints were not available". Our thought at the moment is to make a faithful reproduction of the head, the way the factory did it, without attempting to make major modifications. Cost estimate at the moment is "under $1000 including shipping" for a finish-machined head w/guides and seats, ready to install valvetrain and install, or "under $600 including shipping" for an as-cast head ready for individual modifications.
We want to see about getting Doc on board as chief (re-)engineer since he has experience with these heads, with me and Juan on financing and logistics. Obviously if the price of the head goes stratospheric, then we will need more financial backing, but we are trying to strike a balance here: The more people chip in, the less money each person has to spend, but the worse becomes the problem of "too many chiefs, not enough indians": Each participant has his own ideas of how and where the work should be done, everyone's got his own pet features and modifications he wants to see in the aluminum head of his dreams. It's very common to come to a complete, gridlocked standstill when there are too many decision makers in the mix. Just take a look at all the previous "dreamy-dream land" threads about aluminum heads that we've had here over the years.
Our thinking on doing the repro (at least initially) as a faithful copy of the factory effort is as follows: This proto head is known to have worked well. The combustion chamber is Chrysler's fast-burn shape, used very successfully in 318s from '85 to '89. The ports are larger and better shaped. It strikes us that significant deviations from this would stand more chance of making things worse rather than better.
So, that's the idea as Juan and I have discussed it so far. Let's discuss it quickly and efficiently: Does anyone see problems with the idea?
you can just keep believing that! I know that the car probally never orignally got 36 m.p.g, but I have no doubt in my mind that I could achieve this goal! Not to mention that m.p.g mike seems to have gotten 40 m.p.g with his Duster!