Re: Dennis Moore's thoughts on heads
OH, BTW back to my original question, Dennis Moore recommended the best option for my year engine would be 441 heads with 2.02/ 1.6 valves for 20 hp. I went this route but with more efficient heads (and the shop I got them said they even polished the chambers and cleaned up casting defects) Dennis only said the Vortecs were best for 97 up engines (probably because of intake etc)
Dennis does recommend Vortec heads with earlier engines. He is very specific though. He recommends them with low-compression after-market quench style pistons. He does not recommend them for standard flat-top pistons. He covers quench and its importance in other sections of the book. This does seem to ignore the fact that all production vortecs come with low-compression dish pistons (non-ideal quench) but still provide 30hp over prior heads.
The dart iron eagles do appear to be designed similiar to the vortec chamber. Outside of the S/S dart head, they seem to be geared toward higher rpm hp, ie larger valves and larger runners. Did you go with the 180cc intake runners (smallest w/2.02 i valves)? Which size chambers? and which pistons do you have, dished or flat-top?
Dennis also covered building engines for the total pkg and final goals, in other chapters. If an engine/drive combination is only going to see 0-5Krpms, your choices should be geared to that range. Your head and induction choices are probably geared to 4-6K+ range. The rest of your engine and drive are geared toward a max 5K. Even if you went to water cooled headers, exhaust is now good for the higher rpms, but drive and engine are not designed to run sustained at these rpms.
While your choices are somewhat unbalanced, they may not be fatal. If your boating mostly involves light loads and WOT and near WOT running, it may work out fine. You may have issues with max people load and planing times, pulling-up water skiiers, and possibly even during long idling/no-wake zones.
