The Guys at West Coast Cylinder Heads worked hard to get my stock 5.3l heads ported and milled across the Christmas holiday and I finished installing them Monday. They fitted stainless 1.95" intake and 1.57" exhaust valves, ported the bowl areas and reduced the combustion chamber size from 62cc to ~57cc. I installed a Vinci #080 cam in October and ended up with 280hp/287tq SAE with the stock exhaust manifolds. I installed Gibson shorty CA smog legal headers at the same time with the heads. I don't have any dyno results yet, but my HPTuners scanner shows significant airflow gains (grams/cyl) starting around 2400 rpm all the way past 5800rpm. This is compared to my cam only intake airflow #'s from the beginning of November. And at 4800 rpm, I'm seeing a 10% increase in g/cyl airflow....... The engine feels much smoother in power delivery and even idles a little better I'm going to do a few days of "street tuning" and the finish it off with some dyno time at LAPD in the next couple weeks. I'll post the results

My hats off to the great crew at WCCH

Stan

 

Fantastic and Congrats! keep us up to speed!

 

nice,,
I bet richards heads kick *** on a 5.3

 

Way to go Stan! That's some speedy work you did to get on the road so quickly.
I'm looking forward to seeing your impression of how the 5.3l responds.

Cheers,



Richard

 

Good info, I think we have the same heads. Looks like I really need to make some time to get them installed now. Be sure to post up the new numbers as soon as you get them. What thickness head gasket did you use?

You didn't happen to measure your piston to valve clearance did you? I'm going to, but I'm curious to see what yours is since our cams are almost identical.

 

I measured the pistons heights at all 4 corners (#1,7,8,2), and they ranged from .006-.008 I rocked the pistons and took the average. I went with the stock style Victor head gaskets because no-one seems to make a thinner gasket for our bore size (3.780). Cometic has 3.910 in just about any thickness you want, and they said it should work. But I didn't want to experiment. I did not measure the piston to valve clearance because the cam duration is pretty mild. You could probably just call Vinci and ask them about it. Good luck on your install

 

CONGRATS ON THE INSTALL!

Let me know if you are interested in another option for dyno tuning.

 

Good info, I'm using .045 cometics with the 3.910 bore, like you said, Cometic said it would be fine. I'm gonna give Vinci a call, I might step up to a bigger cam after the heads.