Striker heads/cam VERY happy

[SYNFULL]

I know this is a complicated question, but simply put for the money what's better- heads and cam, or roe s/c. I have been planning on the roe since I got my car but would love to have that kind of power n/a. I have a 99 acr and i have read that the cam is decent. I already have belanger headers, randomtech exhaust, 1.7 t&d (which I guess I would have to sell if i went with the stryker heads), and Vec 2. I am guessing that the heads with installation would be about 9k, maybe 10k with a cam. Roe would cost me about 7k with me doing the installation(since I already have the vec).
I guess i am answering my own question in that It would be costing me about 3k more to go n/a.
Any input

 

[vprtech]

Just to clarify - the striker heads are NOT ported. They are a new casting . they are CNC machined. One can get striker heads ported. and if one has high air flow demands then one should. but comparing strikers to ported stock heads is like comparing apples to orange juice.

So in order of benefit (also in order of cost from least to most):

1. stock heads - as they come from the factory
2. stock heads ported by a generic head porter
3. stock heads ported by a specialty head porter such as greg good
4. striker heads - as they come from JMCH
5. striker heads ported by a generic head porter
6. striker heads ported by a specialty head porter such as greg good

Note that #4 always costs more than #3, but that #3 sometimes outflows #4... but they close. So it isn't unreasonable to swap #4 and #3 above.

my .02...

JD

Just to clairify, the Striker heads are not hand ported, they are CNC ported. Jeff offers a "Street" and a "Race" version of the head. According to Jeff, one of the major design goals of the head, was to improve the coolant flow, and to reduce or eliminate area's where steam pockets can form. This is fairly obvious when you put a Striker head next to a production head. Additionally, the Striker head is just beefier, the rocker bosses have more material around them, and the deck is much thicker than the production head.

I might add, that recently, there was a Viper engine locally, that made over 740 horse power on a DTS engine dyno, with Jeff's standard street car hydraulic cam, 11 to 1 compression, Striker heads (out of the box), stock match ported intake manifold, stock throttle bodies, 103 octane unleaded fuel, and a built 511 cubic inch short block.

- Chris

www.dcperformance.com

 

[Bugeater]

Being that I put mine on a racecar, the cooler running design was a very close second (behind power) as the primary purchasing decision...unfortunately my car hasnt been able to get more than 10 laps around the track without seeing 250 degrees on the water temp gauge...thats at least 20 degrees hotter than my prior setup. The car feels strong initially, but when it gets hot feels like my stock motor. Ugh.

Car is going back to Tom Sessions soon (I hope) to get looked at. Hopefully he can find the issue. I have an AEM sitting in the garage that I want Underground to tune as well. Been frustrating to say the least.

Chris - are you mainly putting strykers on cars with re-mapped stock ecu's or do they use AEM? I am strickly talking about NA cars, as I know the forced induction crowd use VECs or others...

 

[Joseph Dell]

I have run several track days w/ my strikers and never had any overheating issues. and that is with a TT setup. i'm not sure what your set-up is but i think your results are atypical.

One thing I wanted to clarify while I'm here: The strikers are a ported head. they are a new casting and they are ported by a CNC machine but the casting being different means that the most basic level striker is equal to a stage 2.5 or stage 3 hand port job. I've seen some hand port jobs on stock head castings flow more air than the basic level striker head but i've also seen it the other way too. As for base #'s, you are starting with a higher water mark when you start with a new casting. You'll never see (for example) 400cfm of airflow on a set of stock heads b/c they physically can't do it. 400cfm is theoretically possible on the striker castings with the right hand-port job. theoretically.

The ideal way to compare would be to lay out all the flow #'s from all the different porters so you could see options. the intangibles are things like deck thickness, cooling, etc... but those are things that a new casting like the JMC casting considers more heavily (and is ultimately why i swapped to those).

To give a real world example, my Greg Good heads that I sold to help offset some of the cost of the JMC Striker heads flowed 1 or 2 more CFM @ .600 lift on a flow bench. and the exhaust ports actually flowed a tiny bit more. BUT, the car picked up some serious cooling capacity and because of the different design of the ports (basically all of Jeff's R&D), the car made more power at the same airflow level.

I wish I could explain it further, but it is as much an art as it is a science and I am neither a scientist or an artist!

JD