Cracked "New" Champion heads

Ive never had a cracking problem with my 2 sets of heads just guides problems:) Neals heads have cracked on the sides and leaks coolant and i dont believe this has anything to do with HP.. His head gaskets and bearings are perfect.Cal on the other hand makes big power and at those levels a guys is running at his own risk no matter what parts you run:D I suggested to Neal to drill a small hole in the deepest part of the logo were it cracked just to see how thin they are in that area. They need to be welded anyways ;)I believe Neal started this thread to see if he is the only one that has had this problem and not to slam Tom:)
 
Excellent points Bruce. I especially like the last paragraph, that is my perspective. If individuals want to contact me with any list of complaints, I would be more than willing to get with Tom about it and see what we can do to improve an already awsome product. I have already been contacted by a few guys not with just complaints either, but with cuddos for Tom and how good the head is performing on their cars. Just as a note, the fastest, TSO, TSM and TSE cars all run Champ heads.
 
Geno, beleive me I know. I'm still finding pieces of my heater box on my garage floor. Got flustered and took it out with a hammer, but thats my point. There are no other stock style heads, haven't been since M&A went out of business, and I know that the cracking on these levels shouldn't force Champion out of the Buick business either,but the post got out of hand and bashing started. I'm concerned as should be everyone that Neals are cracked around the 800hp level, because I don't think 800hpo should be too much to ask out of a premium race head. We should be trying to find out if it is an isolated incident. Jack came in and stated how many passes he has on an 800hp motor and all hell broke loose. I didn't see the cheap shot, and i'm still trying to find where someone posted Neal's et to strt the mph, over et war. Lets stick to finding out how much the heads can take before a problem can occur. I agree with the above about Cal's car.. I don't think Champion imagined their heads would have 1200 HP worth of boost going through them.
 
just a thought, don't jump on me saying that tehy shouldn't crack no matter what, but has anyone thought about mabe the choice of head gasket's being the problem, from my chebby experiance is that on big boosted chevies it is not a bad idea to run a copper head gasket that mantains a perfect mating surface, unlike pater gaskets that can settle unevenly, thats why some people go back and retorque heads after a few miles and heat cycles, but with the cracked and uncracked heads, what kinda gaskets are you using, mabe we can put together what does/doesn't work instead of jsut complaigning , mabe we can do som solving.
Grant
 
champiom heads

i have champion R heads on my stage motor, i use fel-pro 1000 gaskets, my block is O-ring for them bore size is 3.940 at the nats, i normally run 25 lbs boost, cal tweaked the program and i turned up the boost 38 lbs spiked 40, my champion heads are ok so far, i went 9.31 at 151 mph, the extra boost only tore up my trans. and conv, tires spun a lot with high boost, then again my supension is not the greatest, i have a pair of old champions that cracked twice and welded up, i have a pair of old m@a that have never cracked or leaked, im sure the valve guide seals are leaking on my new heads, it smokes on start up . bill from champion heads. and i talked a lot he is a nice guy. i also have a stage 2 headed gn back haved car that we are taking to morroco , hope to see a lot of buick people there ,

:confused: oc==[ old man who wants to go fast]
 
WOW two running stage two cars.
You are my hero :D
Have you ever considered adopting a
29 year old son ? ;)


Please tell me more about your 2 cars!!!
 
Funny how I knew this post would cross over into the general tech and start to worry people running stock blocks.
 
Scott,

I really don't think those guys have to worry much about cracking their heads unless they are the very early versions. Those first castings had no reinforcement in the water port area underneath the end bolt holes under the valve cover. After some use they will crack around the outside dia. of the washer recess and begin to leak water into the valvecover area. BTW, I saw you were selling some twin turbo headers, you don't have any single turbo Stage II headers for sale do ya?

Neal
 
I will trade you my set of ATR S2 single tubo 4 bolt headers for your set of cracked heads LOL Hehe;)
 
Neal, i'm desperately looking for a set myself. Just about everything else is done on the car, but I can't do anything about it until I sell these headers. I had offers of $750 for them. I'd much rather bury them in the backyard than give them away. Seems like ATR didn't have any on the shelf and I was just going to do a rams head and mount the turbo in the front of the motor, but my welder took on too many new projects, and he works for beer.:)

Geno, don't ya wanna go TT??? I've got a new set for trades NIB sitting right here.;)
 
Gene,

You're on crack. ;) Maybe you can make some sort of deal with Scott. If you want to sell the headers I'd be interested. Are these the ones you got from Terry Ryan? BTW, I got a good laugh from the message you left on my machine yesterday. Thanks, I needed that. :) Did you get the pic I sent you?

Neal
 
Ya i got the picture and it didnt look like it had been pouring out:)
I see on another thread that a guy is helping people with problems with Tony at CAS :) :) I think Jack was trying to help out of the goodness of his heart just like this guy is:) To bad it all went sideway because im sure Jack ment well:cool:
 
Champion Heads Caveat Emptor

Gene,

You're right the coolant leak wasn't a gusher and didn't really cause any sort of problem during normal driving. It wasn't until I had the car on the chassis dyno until I figured out where the water was coming from. I figured out my torque convertor was wasted too. That was an eye opening experience. :(

A crack is a crack so I'll have to do my best to fix it. I figure I'm going to grind it out as best I can and have it TIG welded. That should fix it for a while. I'm going to take some better pics. Hopefully someone can tell me how to post them here.

Neal
 
Re: Champion quality is job #1

Originally posted by 750H.P.V6
BOOSTMANDO,

It appears to be a leak and a crack also. There is a well defined waterfall mark from one spark plug hole to the other in the same area as you've described. For right now I think I'll try to weld repair them and the when TA gets their heads into production I'll get a set of those. The only other possibility is to go Stage II.

Neal

P.S. Gene, you're right my crack habit is getting out of control. ;)
Click to expand...
You'll never regret going stage II head.

Art.
 
Originally posted by Brutal Six
Jack,

Based on where I'm at now I'll fix my heads myself since I don't have 6 months to get it done by Champion. Originally when I started this thread I just wanted some input to see who was having problems but now it's been hijacked I doubt we can get it back on track.

Do me a favor though, why don't you go to you shoebox of timeslips and see how many you really have in the past 18 months. My guess is that it's less than 100 but it sort of a moot point now huh? When the TA heads hit the market the proof will be there for all to see just how good the Champion product is.

Thanks for the help

Neal
Click to expand...
I highly doubt that Jack has less than 100 runs in the past 18 months. You probably don't know Jack or watch him run. He's one of the first to the line and simply loves to race. He goes to all the Buick events he can, Bristol, nats, Norwalk, Reynolds, Cecil, etc. If you have ever raced at one of these events you can easily get 10-20 runs in, in a day, most likely more. When Jacks not fixing someone else’s car at one of these events he's sitting in the staging lanes waiting to be called. I know Jack's engine builder and he tells me he’s petrified when Jack freshens his motor because there is no telling the carnage that might be found because of the number of runs. His motor was just freshened this winter and had 300+ passes on it, no problems except the normal wear that can be expected after 300 9 second passes. Jack aint BS'ing when he says he's got 500 passes on those heads. As long as Jack doesn't let up he'll probably put 100-200 runs a year on his motor!

Jack, dying to find out how you like the solid roller! Probably pulls like a mother F_cker with the 88 turbo!!!

Can't wait to see you at E-Town and see the new motor perform!
 
Right on the money Art, Bobby actually said the bearings looked so good, he could have reused them!!! As for the cam, the few runs I got in at Bradenton, in Florida back in March were crazy. Felt awsome...... I used the T80, first pass was pretty much a roll out, never seeing over 6,000 rpm and about 18-19lbs of boost resulted in a 9.70, I thought it was a 10.50 pass at best. I ran it up to as high as 74-7500 rpm after that and couldn't believe the difference. On the street I hit the rev limiter at 8,000 in a blink, course I instantly blew the tires away.
As for Etown, I hope to have it running later this week, got the new Turbonetics 88 on it now, all I can say is I'm getting excited now.........
 
Originally posted by JCotton
Right on the money Art, Bobby actually said the bearings looked so good, he could have reused them!!! As for the cam, the few runs I got in at Bradenton, in Florida back in March were crazy. Felt awsome...... I used the T80, first pass was pretty much a roll out, never seeing over 6,000 rpm and about 18-19lbs of boost resulted in a 9.70, I thought it was a 10.50 pass at best. I ran it up to as high as 74-7500 rpm after that and couldn't believe the difference. On the street I hit the rev limiter at 8,000 in a blink, course I instantly blew the tires away.
As for Etown, I hope to have it running later this week, got the new Turbonetics 88 on it now, all I can say is I'm getting excited now.........
Click to expand...

8 second Pumpkin.......
:D :cool: :)
 
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