Summit Cast Iron Vortec Head Review

hey guys this is Eric weingartner with wine Gardener racing today's video is a product review video over this head what head is this because you're like that looks horrible this is the summit hopefully you see it it's their Summit Vortec head for a small block Chevy and I know some of you are thinking right away uh that's not a Vortec at all that's not a Vortex pattern well I'm going to cover all that in detail today so first off I want you to know that Summit actually doesn't really make things what they do is they pay companies to make things for them and then the summit puts their logos on them much like Jags this head is actually I'm 99 sure it's a dart head so Dart makes or used to make a Vortec head for a small block Chevy and I believe this would be that hit and I'm going to talk about why it's different from what it is and we'll get to all that in just a minute but dark I'm not even sure Summit or Dart even sells his head anymore because ever since code would the cast iron foundries have spent more time with customers that pay more money which aren't aftermarket cast iron head things so a long time ago cast iron might have been more economical to buy than versus aluminum but those days of sale between shipping and actual casting costs so I don't know that someone even sells these could used to be a low Buck alternative same with dart so you're probably looking at these injuries like man that looks really really strange well let me start with the chamber side and I'll come back to what this is but let's start there these are the chambers and instantly you're like that is not a Vortex chamber because if you've ever seen a Vortex chamber you'll know it does not look like this you are correct this reason why I 99 sure that this is a dart head and there's a couple clues you see these water passages that's a dart design and you're like nah I got these aluminum heads from eBay or Amazon and they've got the same things you want to know why because they copied AFR that's a copy I'm sorry I didn't copy copy Dart this is a Chinese imitation of a dart head and the reason why I have it here is to show you this this chamber that you see here is the dart Iron Eagle if you've got a dart Iron Eagle and you've got the non-platinum version your chamber looks a lot like this that's their chamber design if you had the Platinum one your chamber looks like that so if you've ever gotten a set of iron Eagles and you're like I'm not sure if they're platinum or non-platinum what you can do is you can just look at the chambers it looks like this that's the non-platinum if it looks like that that's the Platinum however this one I believe is the 165 CC head and I believe they might have called it their stock replacement head or something like that but it had the same chamber shape and design and that's what I believe this is so what I think Dart did is they took their 165 CC head and said hey there's a market for some people wanting some vortec heads why don't we sell them a Vortec head but we don't want to do a whole new casting spend a lot of time on tooling design a Vortec actual head why don't we just try to see if we can't convert what we have to work with a Vortec and that's what I believe has happened because this chamber like I said it's the non-platinum chamber version of the iron Eagles but if you were looking at their Sr or stock replacement ones it would have the same chamber and I think they took the 165 and that's what it is and then made this their Vortec head how they did it do that right well obviously they didn't change the chamber but what they did do and hopefully the camera captured this well enough which doesn't look like a wheel from not from this angle there we go they put a nice five angle valve job on one two three four five so we've got five angles and they used a little bit of a bowl cut here to kind of open up the Bowl here and on the exhaust they left a hell of a ridge there that's why it doesn't flow very well they put their radius valve job the valve side came in at 1.94 and 1.50 now I've got flow numbers to go with this so if you're still watching you made it through this I'm going to give you flow numbers this whole thing but um it's a 194 150 just like your factory Vortec head would have so same size there chamber obviously different chamber size is 64 CC's and as you could tell much like the vortec head they are a standard plug so straight plug now let's get to this part this ugly looking thing you're thinking is not a Vortec pattern is because it looks like with dark hit now you can see from this angle the port says you could tell if you just squared them would be the regular square Port 165 CC Runners but it looks like they just said you know what we can convert these to Vortex you know to get the injectors because stock Vortex had an injector if we just cut out a little groove right here at the top of the port and that's looks like what they've done they just cut a little Groove as far as your intake pattern here was what you see here instead of drilling and tapping the holes for your conventional small block they put the vortex pattern in and that's all that they've done on the top side yeah they did help you out a little bit they drilled and tapped for the because it all their Dart heads have this are drilled and tapped for screw and stud so that's good and they did this other little cut here so you could run a larger spring but you'd have to run a step because if you notice on the iron eagle head you can up run up to 155 spring well because these are using the one little 125 Springs The Vortex would have they put a little step there so it sits in there to keep it from moving or rotating or moving around I should say Ladder Up and Down stuff so there's that so essentially there you go now you're like what about the valve covers if you notice see those blocks that's where the standard valve cover would be although they just milled it out so you couldn't bolt on the standard valve cover head eye which I don't understand that to me that seems like an extra Machining that didn't need to be done you could have just left the bolts there so people could run either valve cover either the center bolt or the outside ones but the center bolts are still there and now here's the exhaust ports and have you ever picked up an iron eagle that's what the exhaust ports look like this is another clue what they look like compared to a platinum so let me kind of show you this too just to give you an idea yeah yes this is an Amazon head but if you ever get a Platinum version the ports look squared off like this and the most the aluminum versions completely milled flat like this the dark ones that were the Platinum will have a little Dart that actually shoots through the older non-platinums would just say Dart um but anyway that's the exhaust Port that doesn't look like a Vortec one at all so yeah that's what I think it is by the way you can see the core lines when see these see how it has a step here you ever wonder why that is is because whenever they cast these there's a top piece of the mold and the bottom piece the mold and it shifted and so you've got a shift that's why that's there but that's it right there it's essentially what it looks like but you really want to know well how good is this thing right how good or bad well first I'm going to show you this darts known even those the summit like I said I think it's made by Dart Dart was always one of the first to advertisers to use manly valves so it's good valve but if you notice something about the valve this is the intake one it has no back cut this is the exhaust valve it has no back cut now you don't really need to back out on the exhaust but the intake one having one would really help low lift flow but how did it flow so if I'd get my flow sheet out here to show you so I floated on my bench put it on the signs and digital 680 4034 here are the flow numbers that's better than I thought at 400 it has 220. the stock Vortec does worse than that just barely I think it's like 218. so this is a few CFM better there at 500 the stock Vortex usually like 228 some are doing 232. this is 245 so it's way up from a stock Vortec and it keeps flowing so it goes all the way to 233 stock Vortex usually about 515 they drop and flow just like this one does but worse they'll go back to the 220. so this is about 15 CFM better on exhaust all right sorry on intake on the exhaust what you see here is almost the same as what a stock Vortex flows for exhaust that's largely due to this step which I'm going to try again to capture on camera you see there see that step that's left there for Machining where they cut in the seat and stuff and valve job if you got rid of that step easily it's going to go probably 160 180. so that's the reason why that's lower but that's still about the same clothes as Vortex exhaust and there you go so that's the phone numbers and everything on it I fold it without an exhaust pipe um as far as the aftermarket Vortec heads that I've seen it's it's pretty close the EQ Vortex which are no longer available they would do I followed a bunch of them back in the day the good ones did 242 some of the worst ones did 238 so this is really in line with what that's flowing even though it's really just a 165 SS head that's got a little cut at the top but anyway so hopefully you got something out of this video they do use cast iron guides that was the other thing if you notice when I was showing the bowl they're not bronze guides so you might say why do they do that it saves cost so let me just show you real quick again see that there's no bronze or brass that's all cast iron it saves cost because when they cast the head all they have to do now is just cut the whole ring the hole and you've got your guide aftermarket heads they cut a hole and then put an actual guide in it like a bronze one so this just saves cost these are supposed to be some of the cheaper heads anyway there's your little product review of this hopefully you guys got something out of it you guys remember I know some man and take care

Channel: Eric Weingartner

Views: 19,765

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Id: gIVqTsRnMww

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023