SDPC Tech Tips: Vortec Heads for your SBC

hello everybody nick here with scott nikki again for another one of our weekly tech videos we really appreciate you stopping by and following our series here now even though i got an ls engine next to me i'm going to go a little old-school here we're going to talk about our vortex cylinder heads this was a big name for us for the longest time was the vortex cylinder head this is one of gm's highest flowing factory gen 1 style small block cylinder heads these things were great they'd make 350 to 400 horse with just a good cam and good compression and we were selling these like wildfire now if you're wanting to know a little bit here we would take the vortec cylinder head we would machine the valve guides down because that clearance between the retainer and the valve guide where the seat sits was a little too tight so if you guys wanted more than 450 460 or so lift man that retainer would start crashing in that seal causing all sorts of issues so we were taking them we were disassembling them brand new from the factory machining those guides all the way down putting the seals back on putting it back together with a good spring kit and sending it down the road with a cheap high quality jam factory cylinder head that we modified so you can put it on your hot rod or maybe even your 96 to 98 vortec powered truck man we sold a lot of these and for good reason it was just such a great deal it was a high quality casting and they still are they still are a very high quality casting and in the case of an iron head small block this is still kind of the top of the heap until you start getting into modified cylinder heads of course aluminum cylinder heads but if some of you might have found out in the past year if you call up and you ask about these we don't really have these ready and machined anymore and there's a reason for that one the further these get away from production meaning you have to think the last time this engine was used in a factory vehicle i believe it wasn't the 98 c 1500 silverados it actually i think was around 02 or 03 you could get the vortec 350 57 in a van that you know the express van but the further we got away from that date the less common they made these cylinder heads for a while there it wasn't a problem they were still making them they were cheap plentiful then it started getting more and more sparse and now they only make them every so often and most of the time they're going on the vortech crate engine and of course the performance chevrolet performance crate engines they get these two still so we don't have them around as much anymore and here's kind of the other thing it's just kind of the way economics go sometimes these cylinder heads are not as cheap as they used to be it's really a shame a lot of y'all were loving these cylinder heads you were putting them on a cheap hot rod and going down the road and making great power but unfortunately a set of modified vortech heads these days from us runs about 13.99 and that's a big hit in the pocket for a lot of you guys especially considering while this is a high quality factory casting that's a big deal for a lot of people and i agree there's a lot of overseas castings out there and you kind of see them and you go i don't know if i trust that i just i just want to use gm stuff because it's gms i know they made tough stuff so if y'all can do it modified i like it but man when these things started to break you know eleven hundred dollars twelve hundred dollars now they're almost fourteen hundred dollars for a set of modified cylinder heads it breaks our heart too these things aren't a viable option anymore we get calls almost daily people asking if we have any and if we could make them a pair how much they would be and unfortunately we hear it over the phone we hear how broken-hearted you are when you hear about the price so if you give us a call we'll absolutely make you a set we're out of stock at the moment but if we have them in stock we don't mind we'll make you a set of uh set of modified vortex cylinder heads because we know some of you don't care about the price you care about the quality but here's another reason at this price point there's a lot of really high quality cylinder heads these days from companies like edelbrock or trick flow dart and brodix they make aluminum cylinder heads both in the standard intake pattern and the vortec intake pattern remember the vortech heads had that special vertical bolt bolts two on each corner so it was eight total well they make them in that and the standard pattern for you guys that just have a normal small block they're high quality they have the same lift that these things can handle they flow really good they're aluminums let me tell you something we walked this over to the table to make this video almost through my back out this thing weighs a ton and they can be had sometimes for a thousand bucks 1300 bucks or less you know that that beat blows these out of the water now if you still have a set of vortech heads and you are still looking to do the same things that we did we can absolutely still help you out we can sell you this valve spring kit we sell them on our website all the time to guys that are taking their stock heads themselves and taking them down to their local machine shop we also have some guys that run the comp valve spring and uh retainer combo this is a pretty trick thing you can run the ls6 valve spring or the comp 918s or pac-1218s with a comp 787-16 i believe is the part number we'll double check that for you but with that part number it is a drop in valve spring replacement that will do almost 500 lift give or take and keep in mind the reason we word it like that is because production variants on machining on these was unfortunately a little loosey-goosey keep in mind jim never thought we were going to modify these things so when they're putting the valve springs and the seats and the seals on this stuff they just modify them enough for whatever a stock cam did what was that 420 lift 430 lift and going on down the road we're trying to put 500 more in it and we're kind of messing up what gm thought we were going to do with these things but there's a lot of options out there for you guys that want to drop in replacement or you guys want to take yours off and send them off to be machined so don't fret if you're coming into this video hoping to get some good news about these and you're a little heartbroken it's all right you can still modify these but also call us and give us a little bit of specs on what you're working on we might have some aluminum cylinder heads that would be a great option for you guys that are building a hot rod or a 96 to 98 truck that you're trying to hot rod as well we appreciate you guys stopping by for another one of our weekly tech videos we do these every week and we hope that you like subscribe and share so you can you know share this information to help out fellow hot rodders like you and me and we will see you next week for another tech video thanks for stopping by you

Channel: Scoggin-Dickey Parts Center

Views: 36,205

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Id: S3IQguNRV4M

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021