I have found the right partners for this project. A man who worked previously as a researcher in a university, specialized in casting techniques. He now runs a machine shop, and is a hot rodder. He’s going to make the actual design of the head and casting model. Then, I found a cylinder head porting professional, who’s going to design the ports and combustion chamber. He’s probably also going to perform the final machine work on the cast and CNC’d head (install seats, guides + valve job). And finally there’s the foundry, specialized in aluminum casting. For instance, they produce jet propulsion components for Rolls Royce. They also do short production runs. At the moment they’re making an M-series BMW head for a private customer.
We’ll begin by laser scanning my existing 1949 head to find the significant locations, like bolt holes and such. Then we’ll make a blank block, simulating the head, with critical holes, and the porting pro then creates the ports and chambers. Then we’ll scan the block, and create a model of the head, and a casting model. Aluminum shrinks about 1.3% when it cools down, so in a 320 head it means it could be ½” shorter when it comes out of the mold. So a casting model needs to be created as well, that is so much larger.
Initially, our intention is to put the intake ports in place of the spark plugs, and move the plugs in the opposite (exhaust) side. As we are making a head from a clean slate, we don’t want to copy any existing head, but that said, the ports are probably going to look a lot like LS ports. We are going to use components readily available, but don’t want to limit ourselves by doing so. The head will be optimized for my short block, which is overbored to 92 mm with flattop pistons (355 cid). As far as I can tell, the stock valve cover will fit, but not much else.
