Well looks like another player has come to the Gen III cylinder head wars. Now that the competition is getting thick out there you will probably see some of the wanna be CNC ported stock castings fall by the wayside.
Here is what Trickflow (TFS) is bringing to the table:
Trick Flow’s new CNC-ported LS1 aluminum cylinder heads are now available. Designed for high-performance street and race use, Trick Flow engineers changed the valve angles from 15 degrees to 13.5 degrees to decrease valve shrouding and relocated the spark plugs to enhance mid-lift airflow. The new fully CNC-ported cylinder heads feature 64cc combustion chambers, 215cc intake/80cc exhaust runners, 2.04-inch/1.575-inch stainless steel valves, 1.300-inch dual valve springs, and more.
These cylinder heads should be available to Trickflow dealers the first of the year, pricing hasn’t been set yet. I expect they will be very competitive with the new DART Gen III casting that is coming out, or a few dollars more because they are CNC machined where as the DARTS are as cast.
So far the aftermarket casting players include: AirFlowResearch, DART, Trickflow, Edelbrock, ET Performance, All Pro
Yeah what Jack said, AFR is never a bad choice. They are top notch no matter how you look at it. You can’t really compare the 205cc runner AFR to the TFS 215cc runner because it is not fair. AFR heads shine in velocity and low lift torque numbers. Like I always say you don’t race dynos or flow benches. The real test will be how they perform at the race track. You always have the option of getting your AFR 205 or 225cc heads ported further because trust me an experienced porter can get more out of a 100% CNC’ed AFR head
Oh I’ve got no complaints with them at all. I have the 205’s and running only a .558/221 cam and the car has great bottom end and midrange, and pulls to 6600. A blast to drive, and made 420/390, still pulls in about 23mpg avg, and 26ish on the highway with 4.10s.
Just were a bit pricy, and it will be interesting to see how these new competitors are priced. May force AFR to drop down a bit.
The AFR head respond very well to the F.A.S.T. 90 / 90 combo. Usually nets another 20-25 whp on a combo like that.
As far as price I don’t think the TFS will be as cheap as the Dart heads. I figure around $1600-$1700. Also chances of AFR dropping the price on their LS1 line is slim to none. They aren’t going to budge on price and November 1st all the heads in the AFR line went up an average of $35-$45 dollar due to cost of materials
Cool JnJ, thanks for the advice. I was planning on picking up a Fast 90/90 over the winter, and send it off to Tony Mamo at AFR to port match to the 205s. Seems to yield some nice gains over the untouched manifold, and seen some very good numbers floating around LS1tech from those who he’s done it for.
In retrospect my only mistake was I should’ve had them cut a hair to get the CR up to around 11:1. I left them as is, so with the MLS gaskets CR is only around 10.3:1, just a hair higher than stock.