Aluminum vs. Iron Heads on 426 HEMI - PLUS - Boosted Buick Goes Boom

[Music] and here we are 426 hemi cast aluminum heads versus cast iron heads what a mess you just bought this car from what i know oh my god wow got bad news for you buddy [Music] welcome back to nick's garage [Music] nick's got a shop full of good things as usual vasily's digging into this grand national and nick's getting ready for a big comparison test with a 426 hemi it's business as usual at nick's garage but it's going to add up to one big episode strap in and get ready for power [Music] apparently we've got an 86 grand national that he has some destruction i believe in this engine because he was driving it he was pushing it and then he told me he had some kind of noises the engine stalled and then after that he called me says nick and i told the grand national to your shop i said you know what i've got any space right now but you know what bring it in we'll take a quick look so vasily here remove the spark plugs he put a camera down the cylinder see what we've got check this out this is the rod okay that part here going across it's the piston pin whatever is left of it okay and where's the piston the piston is probably swimming in the oil part right now we see the connector mod with the wrist pin but no piston my client was just driving it on the highway and i believe he was pushing it over the limit or what i don't know what he meant by that but he pushed it hard then all of a sudden he heard some noises and the engine stalled okay now let's take a look see what's inside the cylinder how does it look the cylinder looks like it's in you see here some trucks are missing okay let's see what we got let's take a good look can you see that that's the pin the cylinders here and that's the whatever there you see there's a truck mission right here that buick became a five cylinder okay so we lost a pistol looks like okay so that's major destruction in this motor it's called the highway party so from what we see looks like our customers pushing this to the limits or above the limits we also know that's a slightly modified this turbocharged b6 buick so as you can see what you guys vasily has just found inside the cylinder so it's time to take a look into further details what's going on so in the meantime during the oil pan and see what we've got we all know that we have many georges in my shop this is a new george who just bought this car not long ago from after what we see with the camera down into the cylinder what the vasili went through that we can see that this is a total destruction we're gonna have to remove the engine [Music] here we go take a look at this watch out man maybe the piston might come out of there [Music] wow look at that that's green green that's green man no no it's coming out like milk check that out save it oh look at that what a total destruction on this one man we could reuse that you know i'm sure he's got a hole in the cylinder right i'm sure from what i see here i see anti-freeze oil and uh what else yeah a little bit of everything you know what that means you know what this means we're gonna have to remove the engine for sure oh what a mess what a mess look at that man oh look at that take a look we bring your camera in this one man look at this milk it's so thick it's very great all the antifreeze is coming out of here bring me my cornflakes i got bad news for george when i call him i think we'll have a lot of damage on this one i probably still hit his damage block is damaged pistons are gone who knows ben rods damage rods pistons are gone cylinder is gone maybe we need another block they have this cylinder head we haven't even seen the other side yet but anyways right here from what you see here look it's still draining it's got all the antifreeze coming out of here ultimate oil thank god you emptied the tank looks like it we got a mess here you know this engine is a four liter or should i say four us quartz oil pan this is beyond that plus what four gallons oh i don't know man yeah maybe how about all the antifreeze is coming out of the oil pan look at it you guys stuff went through the turbo two because of the exhaust oh yeah this thing went through everywhere look now it's coming out like antifreeze check it out wow what a mess george i you got bad news for you buddy you just bought this car from what i know but anyways vasily go ahead rip this engine out let's what we got inside it's all yours [Music] [Music] [Music] while vasili tears into the turbo in the front of the shop nick's in the engine room getting ready for a big comparison test with a 426 hemi i just finished assembling the silver heads for the 426 hemi that belongs to frank from massachusetts i just did a valve job on it because i wanted to make a test back to back with aluminum heads versus cast iron heads on the same hemi engine that's on the dynamometer but i realized that if i want to match apples with apples that the area behind the valve on the intake side on the aluminum heads were a lot nicer than the cast iron so what i did is i cleaned out the bowl area behind the intake valve to equal the same amount of flow versus the aluminum heads so we could have apples versus apples the ccs are both 170cc aluminum and cast iron so our bottom line is we want to try aluminum heads versus cast iron on the same engine so let's take it next door in the dining room so here we have it this is the cast iron heads they belong to frank and these aluminum heads belong to my brother on this 426 so what i want to do is i want to do some testing the way it is right now play with a little bit with the timing check out how everything goes and uh we're going to see what happens when we put on a set of cast on heads later on so what do you guys think it's going to do is the cast iron going to make more power or the aluminum so stay tuned and find out what's good about the aluminum heads is that they vary about almost uh i would say like these cast iron heads are roughly 75 pounds versus these aluminum energy which is almost like uh i believe 40 pounds in difference so between bolts in the heads you are saving almost 90 to 100 pounds per car so that's good you know when you want to work on a hemi engine and you know it's very hard when you're working in engine bay or even here you want to put a silly head on the block lifting it aluminum not a problem but lifting here this cast iron it's almost uh 75 pounds it's not easy so when you get older you like to go to the aluminum head so anyways right now i just can't wait to get it tested to see what the diff is going to make between cast iron and aluminum okay so let's get some fresh fuel here we go let me get my funnel and we were using a 94 octane from petro canada i've designed this more to run on pump gas not on racing fuel not on aviation fuel just natural pump gas from a service station you know why a lot of my customers like to run their cars uh you know uh they don't go racing with them they go cruising with them so they like to build some power but not too much crazy power because you know what they don't want to run around buying a individual barrels or containers to buy racing fuel they just want to run up to a service station open the gas cap and fill it up keep it simple that's what we call that i'm going to go ahead and advent to get some more fuel just in case we ran out because we're going to do a quite a few testing here today i'm going to start her up with the aluminum heads because i want to make sure i got the perfect timing max out the timing on the aluminum heads and i've also got my brand new turbine here and that's going to measure efficiencies and of course cfm and because the turbine is not designed for a 2-4 barrel i had this box custom made for me for 426 hemi to fit two elder block carburetors so i can measure my my numbers on efficiency and cfm well if i were to guess if cast iron is going to make more power or aluminum i'm not sure they both have 170 cc they both have 225 inch intake valves and 1.94 exhaust files the only differences is the weight besides that who knows maybe it's got a better runner this one does or this one does i don't know all we're going to do is put them on later on and find out you take any silver head aluminum or cast iron a lot of times the power is behind the seat which is the ball area you got to clean it out blend it but you know you got to know your angles you got to know much to open up so there's a lot of physics and science behind all that so you don't just take any sill in it just pour it out in many cases when people do that they could destroy it still ahead so leave it up to the pros that know what you're doing so this is going to be pretty exciting i can't wait to get it started okay it's time to have some fun let's go [Music] and some of you folks out there are asking me why what oil some stands for this is the oil temperature in the oil pan so today we're also going to measure the temperature of the oil in the engine so it's going to be right here as you can see it's 103 degrees fahrenheit it's still pretty cool we're going to get into the green and after that we're going to start testing it now it's idling on its own let it warm up there we have we have uh 15 inches of vacuum at the almost 12 to 1300 rpm frank does not have a car yet so i don't know if he's got far breaks or not but it doesn't matter this is the way we're going to build it there's any way you're going to take it so there we go we're just going to let it warm up and we'll take it from there so we're using french fuel we're using the barometer of 29.87 humidity is at 35.8 percent so we're pretty good air temperature 71 degrees fahrenheit you know i'm having i have it at 38 degrees i'm sure it's a lot less than that before but really let's make that test at 38 degrees how it goes here we go actually this is the way to warm it up is to rev it up i don't remember having it at 38 degrees last time okay let me check everything else oh pressure is good let's check if there's any oil leaks or anything like that let's take a look [Music] okay here we go we're over we just did the same power like we did last time when i tested before we had 4.98 now we are at 4 1997 we're at the same power i guess the timing was at 38 degrees i don't know why i figured i had 32 before here we have 38 degrees on the aluminum heads and we're still stuck at 499 torque i still can't hit the 500 numbers this is just a warm-up test if you guys want to see the graph there it is i see from back to back with the old fuel the new fuel i've got the same power i'm just going to restart the tummy by two degrees and then make another test just gonna back it up a little bit okay i'm gonna put my timing light back on all i want is about 35 here we go let me put it on again and check it out and i need to know if we need to go to a 6200 rpm let me see do we need to go that far let's take a look our horsepower comes in at 6 000 and we have to go to 60 62 okay put the o2 sensor back on let's check the timing here we go [Music] okay we got it at 35 degrees let's make another test oh can i put the water on here we go so [Applause] okay okay that's where we got a 35 degrees timing now let's take a look all right we got the same thing 496 496 no change whatsoever this is what i keep getting 496 497 and i've got a 507 torque at 3 900 rpm and if we look at the horsepower if you take a look here on the chart here we are we're at 497 at 6 000 rpm so it seems like uh we've lost no we haven't lost any horsepower just by retarding the climbing but i've gained uh i've gained torque i'm gonna just back it up a little bit more i don't think it's gonna make much let's go find out you know what i'll bring the timing to 33 degrees and see how it goes let me shut the water pump let's go back to back and see what we're gonna get so let's max out the aluminum heads this is why when we finish testing with aluminum heads we're gonna max it up with what we got and then after that we're gonna tear it down and put on the cast iron heads and then continue testing on the same day so okay let's go okay so we backed up the timing and here we go [Applause] okay whoa got a buff covered heat doesn't matter it doesn't really matter wow you seem to increase that torque let's see what happens here look it out sorry nick whatsoever [Music] okay let's see what we got all right here we go okay we've increased torque here we got 32 33 degrees timing full advance here we go we have 511 torque 11 5 11.5 at 4 000 rpm and our horsepower still up there at 497.5 at 5900 6000 rpm horsepower didn't change it seems like our torque readings are going up and there you have it check this out the horsepower is still at 4.98 i'm trying to get to that 500 mark with the aluminum head so far i can't get it and with the torque we're at 511.5 uh and we're doing good with that so torque is increasing horsepower staying the same we are testing everything at the same time we're checking for uh uh what kind of horsepower we're gonna make aluminum heads versus cast iron and at the same time we're checking uh see if these blocks are gonna hold up with that stitch welding we have good news on the block so far everything is holding in place the rear seal is not leaking oil at all so that's good we've maxed out over 500 torque at 5 11 and a half at 4 000 rpms we're still short of a 500 horsepower we hit 498. i still haven't done it with the aluminum heads i've done a few tests last week i've done a few tests this morning yeah and i played the timing from 38 degrees to 32 i still cannot get my 500 horsepower everything looks good oil pressure is good no valve lashes nothing and everything seems good so the only thing right now we could do is let's try on the cast iron heads and see what we can get [Music] this is what we call a stitch weld block right here there it is this was welded right across [Music] so far it's holding we've taken a few tests we ran it hot we've revved it up and we're not finished testing it yet we still have to cast our heads to put on and still run it so so far on both sides it's holding so there you go frank so far so good okay so we're gonna start cracking the uh bolts loose on the aluminum and cylinder heads so we can get there going on installing the cast iron we're going to start from outside and loosen the cylinder head and then remove it yeah you know what i like i like removing them in the order of the way you install them and then the same way start from the outside and loosen them up as we go inboard this is a key design for uh i don't know what purpose have they designed it for a hemi or not but it doesn't matter you put it on a 3 8 on one end it's a half inch and you need a shortest bubble so you can fit in there and remove them basically the key a wrench with just a hand it's pretty tight so you need something like this to help remove the nuts [Music] so [Music] okay so now we gotta remove the studs so we have 13 bolts on the outside and four on the inside because it's a hemi cylinder head so for that reason i had to bring it here remove the four studs and transfer it over to the cast iron heads and this is how it's done we use a tool that's a stud remover like so [Music] and then with a little sealer like so because it's it's exactly threaded into the intake port of the cylinder head and for that reason we put a little bit of uh liquid teflon okay then we do this and we're going to do the same with all ford looks like toothpaste this is a multi-layered gasket made by comedic and because i've been using aluminum cylinder heads i do not go with the chrysler shim gasket which is 20 thou because those were made for the cast iron heads so these head gaskets are 27 thousand thick in other words this is what i need for the aluminum heads now that i'm replacing it with the cast iron heads i am going with a 20 thousand shim gasket because uh i could use a multi-layer on cast iron but since it's my customer's car and i want to make more power out of it i want to go back what came with the factory with a 20 000 gasket which i'm just going to bring in right away and you guys are going to see it [Music] they're made by felpro they're 20 thick so they're going to give about a 7 000 thinner than the uh head gasket that i've used on the aluminum heads but you know it's not a big difference in compression ratio but this is what i want to use and this is what we're gonna go with is what came with the factory and we're going with this it's time for knicks tricks for you guys that have 426 hemis when you use the 20 shin gasket and after that when you assemble the engine you get it running sometimes you see a minor oil leak right here on the corner of the cylinder head between the block and the cylinder head the reason is because where the drain is right there and right there sometimes the gasket doesn't get completely squashed hundred percent so what i do is i help it by adding a little bit of circle like so you see and i'm going to apply some in the back take a good look watch this just a very thin layer it's just insurance there you go that's the drain and of course a little bit on the top where the water jackets are like so especially when you use the 20 thousand shim gasket this is a good idea just to put a little layer thin of silicone doesn't need much very thin layer [Music] you know i've run a lot of hammies on my dynamometer sometimes you know you're breaking in a cam or something and you see sometimes maybe a little oil stain or a water leak right in the corner so then i figured that problem i see what the problem was even though the heads were torqued down correctly so i added silicone light fill between the gasket and the block and also the cylinder head and after that there is no leaks whatsoever [Music] [Applause] so let's go get that copper spray going you know what i've been using it for years and it works great let me tell you and it works it makes a good seal and this is exactly what you need it's a soft metal spray and it makes a good feel on your water porch compression and all don't forget you're using a very thin gasket so you want the best help you can get make sure your deck is clean i use thinner for that there you go you can see it's written top there perfect there let's go so now let's go to the other side here we go one more coat i think i did it right just to be sure okay then you spray it upside down so you can clean the nozzle like so you see that now stop there you go let's go put on the other side [Music] and now we're ready to install the cylinder heads [Music] [Music] [Music] while the 426 hemi is coming together in the dyno room the heavily damaged turbo 6 is coming out of the buick on lift number three [Music] and once he's got the engine out of the car it doesn't take vassily long to start finding pieces lots of little pieces yeah so this one took a beating yellow bent push right through here and the deeper he gets the worse things look there's nothing left to this [Music] i think we have a bigger problem than a head gasket here george i'm sorry sierra has a chance to upgrade i don't think i've seen ever uh as as bad as that damage oh my god wow i thought that i thought the 440 was bad but this one is bad yeah there's no more pistons nevermind no more there's no more cylinder first time in my life i see this [Music] wow and we wonder where the pistol went now we know it's in your oil opinion what i am mess i gotta see this holy smokes oh you can't fix this this is all scrap wow oh look at that it's got a big chunk missing out of the cylinder forget it it's gone scrap the block man that's what used to be there wow it's gone look at that wiggle uh george comes to see this all right it's time to look for another engine keep it up devin [Music] all right i finally got to sit down i finally a couple few hours later we finally got the cast iron heads put on so uh let's start up and warm it up and we'll take it from there five eleven i can't get the 500. fourth horizon hey i moved the time in 38 36 34 32. we need to bring the oil at 180 degrees so we're going to bring up the parameters the same way we had tested before so i want to get the water temperature around 165 167 fahrenheit i want to get the oil temperature around 179 then after that we're going to start testing after this is done we have another test after that i want to take off the headers and put on his exhaust manifolds we're going to see what that does so anyways let's compare apples with apples cast iron versus aluminum with the headers which are two and one eighth inch diameter let's make a small test i'm just going to take it at 5000 make sure everything was good we're going to take a small test from 3000 rpm to 5000 rpm just to warm it up here we go three thousand to five thousand small test here we go i just wanna warm up the oil let's see over the water [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] let's say you want to tighten the evolved cover on the other side [Music] so it doesn't look promising uh let's see look i only took it 5000 rpm from let's take it at 4500 pampers we only took it to 5000 rpm at 45 it made 411 horsepower here at 45 we made 423 torque check the torque out let's say at 3700 make 480 over here at 3700 make 503. so so far i don't know the aluminum heads seem to be ahead i haven't touched the timing yet it's still at 32 degrees where i left it off with the aluminum heads so you know what let's warm up the all and get going let's go to five five i'm just warming up do well actually let's go to 62 let's go 6200 ready one two two here we go i want to run the same oil temperature if you want to compare apples with apples you know what i mean okay here we go here we go we're going to take it from 3000 rpm to 6200 and here we go at 300 rpms per second so [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] finally finally we've got over 500 horsepower here we go there we go there we go we just have to warm it up like i said earlier let's see take a look at this finally hit the 500 mark okay here we go we did it so you know what rpm 510 at 6 100 rpm okay here we go we got we lost torque we did better turns before by 10 torque this one did a 501 versus 511. so this mentioned with the caster well you know what let's make one more test back to back and the horsepower we finally got five 10.4 at 6 000 rpm take a look but we lost we traded off 10 horsepower 10 torque we switched it we lost 10 torque we gained 10 horsepower vice versa versus the aluminum heads but we're gonna make another test just to make sure i want to get the oil at 179 degrees right there 181 so make another test in a few minutes okay and the timing is at 32 degrees i did the best timing with the uh aluminum 32 degrees maybe i don't know you know what we're gonna play around actually i'm pretty good because the oil was pretty warm there okay your oil was out there 172 it's not too bad not too bad okay let's check the graph here we go that went pretty good hey any oily in the back cover yeah you know what tighten it a bit more and uh that's it it's an easy fix by me i'm concerned about the oil leak on the rear seal but it looks like it's very good we're all good let's make one more test ready lead the panel leave the fan on okay let's make another test we're not gonna touch nothing just pull it right now okay ready okay here we go [Applause] [Music] okay let's see what we got here now here we go around the temperature oh we should run a little bit warmer the water okay we're still in the same area five ten horsepower nothing changed same thing five volt three five oh four five volt four torque yeah we gained 10 horsepower we lost five torque we so here we go not much of a big difference eh you know we just knocked off a hundred pounds on the front end of the car by replacing the cast iron heads with aluminum heads i did not touch the timing yet it's still at 32 degrees and uh we seem to be gained 10 horsepower with the cast iron heads and we lost about 5 torque with the cast iron heads so overall basically they're the same thing so the only thing i want to try after is i'm just going to maybe advance the timing a bit what do you say yeah that's and that's the time and we'll bring it to 34 degrees we have it right now with 32 we're going to 34. and all you folks that want to know what camp specs are for everybody wants to know there they are there's a camp specs to this motor [Music] okay let's make another test with a timing of 34 degrees here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Applause] so so i know the valve cover is leaking but my concern is the rear main seal so let's go take a look there you have it right after the test not a drop there you go i love it when it doesn't leak at all perfect we just did a test of 34 degrees let's check our scoreboard and what do we got oh boy okay so it looks like the cast iron heads need more advance oh look at this we hit 515 already oh wow wow this is something new to me look at this we hit a 504 505 torque at 3 900. and we hit a 515 horsepower at 6100 rpm it seems like the cast iron needs more advanced timing i had 32 the best timing on the aluminum heads i remember last week when i was playing with the aluminum heads the best timing the best horsepower the best timing on the aluminum is 32 degrees full of ants this one here right now i just did a 34 and it just impressed me on the horsepower 5 15. we are going to advance it another 2 degrees go to 36 and make another test to see how it goes [Music] this is the reason why we dyno test motors we want to see their maximum air fuel ratio is perfect the timing now we're at 34 right now i'm going to bring the 36 and make another test okay here we go [Music] [Music] i'll just give it a few minutes going to cool down the room we're going to run another test at 36 degrees i don't think i'm going to go any further than that because i don't usually put it higher than that on cast iron heads but we're going to test it one more time with 36 degrees are we ready let's go here we go so [Applause] boy is that the engine going through the pace so here we have it we did a test at 34 degrees timing with the cast iron heads and the best results were 519.1 horsepower at 6 000 rpm and our torque numbers was uh 505 at 3 900 rpm so there you have it we got almost 20 more horsepower with the caster head versus the uh aluminum heads and torque gain while the aluminum heads at a maximum 511 torque this will pull out five and five okay so we lost about five six torque with the aluminum heads but we gained 20 horsepower with the cast iron heads and there you have it and right now we're just going to make a test without the turbine just for your views to watch the fuel go down the carburetors let's go ahead and cool down the knee let me make sure there's no noises in the motor [Music] here we go shut the water vapor city there we have it let's see check for noises okay looks all good oil pressure is good temperature oil temperature okay here we go we'll have to adjust the carburetors in the meanwhile okay there we have it here's the fan now pull up the same horsepower 514 okay so we're there okay we didn't test it with the turbine right now i just wanted to make a video with the uh fuel going down the uh carburetors but anyways there you have it cast iron heads made more power than the aluminum heads the total difference was we had a gain of 20 horsepower with the cast iron heads and uh we lost five torque versus the aluminum heads so now let's make another test now that we've finished comparing apples with apples cast on versus aluminum now that the customers got exhaust manifold that's the way the enemy is going home we're going to put on that exhaust mount with it try to see what it does [Music] [Music] all right so now that we've got the results with the cast iron versus aluminum heads let's make one more test now we have left the cast iron heads on the engine that's the way customers taking it hole and also he's not going home with headers he wants exhaust manifolds so let's make another little test so we took up the headers and as you guys can see we have the factory exhaust manifolds so let's make a test and let's see where we end up with this okay let's go [Music] [Music] okay let's go [Music] so so wow okay here we go all we're going to do is we want to test and here it is with the exhaust manifold without the same timing at 34 degrees and what do we got is torque maximum torque wow our maximum torque was 484 at uh at 4 800 rpms it came in very late and then horsepower came in at 484 84.85 at 5900 rpm so there you have it so we have 519 we're at 484 so that's 15 and 20 about 35 horsepower loss with the exhaust manifolds and the torque 505 we went to 485 or so so we lost 20 torque and we lost 35 horsepower so it's not that bad anyways that's not bad at all same camera same everything except this time we had the headers removed and installed the factory exhaust manifolds there you guys there you have it now you know the results between cast iron versus aluminum and also when you remove the headers you've got exhaust manifolds and i've given you guys all the results you got the cam specs the only difference was the seven pound gasket difference that's all i had a 20 thousand the cast iron heads and i had a 27 thou on the aluminum heads so there you have it you guys i match the apples with apples that's the best i can do i've done as much as i can this is a client's motor i've put it to the pace quite a few times also wanted to check the stitch welding so everything held in place no it leaks everything went well and now we're done and frank thank you for letting us test your motor and there you have it and thanks for joining me we'll see you guys next time thank you and you guys if you look down below the video we have a whole bunch of merchandise that you guys can buy so whatever you like buy it love it wear it and enjoy it and help spread the word of nick's garage and if you have some time check out our patreon page we have extra content and you guys can watch it and take it from there and we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Nick's Garage

Views: 73,727

Rating: 4.9314218 out of 5

Keywords: Nick Panaritis, Engine Builder, Montreal, Muscle car, MOPAR, Big Block, V8, Street race, Performance, Racing, Drag race, Nick's Garage, Modification, Stock, CAM, ignition, Dyno test, Dyno, Dynamometer, Engine Test, numbers matching, Roadrunner, Road runner, Race truck, Horse Power, Horsepower, upgrade, Engine Build, Piston Damage, Head Damage, Block Damage, Explode, Rare, Car and Driver, Grand National, Buick, Turbo, Boosted, Over Boosted, Hemi, Aluminum, Cast Iron, Heads, Headers, Manifolds, 426

Id: 4VgY_Ur63pE

Length: 61min 23sec (3683 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020