Chapter 9 Just Breathe

  Yet another piece of the puzzle, the cylinder heads, were acquired a few years back when opportunity knocked and kept in mind for a maximum effort Studebaker engine.  Heads with good airflow, or lack thereof, are a major issue for Studebaker racing projects.  With an engine designed in the early 50's for a completely different circumstance, Studebaker's engineering team was looking for a small displacement, high compression V8.  This makes for a good solid bottom end, but they never dreamed the horsepower race would require larger and larger displacement, with ever increasing RPM levels.  That heads designed in the 50's would run out of steam as more performance was demanded, was inevitable.

  The Big Three were able to design new heads with better flow, but Studebaker's finances required creative thinking without much budget.  Throughout the 50's and early 60's Studebaker pretty much used different heads purely for compression ratio changes.  The biggest effort to getting more air into and out of the cylinder centered around compressing the intake air with belt driven superchargers as in the Golden Hawk.  With Detroit getting serious about the horsepower wars in 1962, it was clear that Studebaker had to answer with more potent power plants.

  The announcement of the Avanti and Jet Thrust engines added 4 high performance options.  Known as "R" Series engines, buyers could choose the R1 with hotter cam and reasonably increased compression, The R2 and R3 which included Paxton centrifugal superchargers, and the R4 dual 4 barrel variants.  The R3 and R4 engines also had improved heads.  The intake ports were opened dramatically.  Larger intake and exhaust valves were installed which required moving each pair of valves away from one another and notching the engine block for clearance and increased airflow.  The R3 heads quickly became sought out by engine builders seeking big performance gains.

  The chart above relates a set of stock R2 heads compared to the R3 cloned and ported heads.  Factory R3 heads varied widely in performance but generally fall about half way between the two examples.

  Total numbers of R3 heads cast are hard to come by.  That demand outstripped that figure, whatever it may be, made the price go as high as complete shortblocks.  As a guess, there were less than 200 "B" blocks, the stamping added to blocks destined for R3 or R4 use.  Perhaps, enough to complete those engines and that amount again for replacement parts is close.  Still that is less than 400 sets. The time to buy a set is when you find an owner who will put a price on them.

  With a set of real deal R3 heads out of the budget, the quest began for something just as good or better using more conservativley priced components.  A builder in the Atlanta area was taking common Studebaker heads, welding on more material where needed and matching the R3 intake manifold.  The chambers featured R3 sized valves.  With a lot of grinding and cutting the ports on these heads promised R3 performance plus.

 

  I picked up a set from the builder and proceeded to install them on my factory R2 engine.  The perfomance gain was immediate and satisfying.  Bottom end torque was vastly improved with careful modulation of the throttle needed to keep the rear tires from spinning at any point throughout 1st and 2nd gear.  I ran these R3 clone heads until I sold the R2 Avanti, when I put the original heads back on for the sale.

  With no running engine to play with myself, I offered to loan the heads to an internet friend who had a flow bench and some Studebaker racing engines.  Tom had been working toward getting the maximum performance from stock Studebaker heads for years and jumped at the chance to experiment with mine.  I dropped them off at a friend's in Georgia who later took them to Tom's in Virginia.

  When Tom got the heads I had been running them very rich and there was considerable soot and carbon.  Tom had to clean them up just to flow test them.  As he cleaned and flowed each cylinder, Tom began tweaking the back cut on the valves and some small changes he felt would help them.  Ultimately, the time came to install them on an engine and see what they did in a real application.

  The test bed was a Lark Tom had.  No cage, no trick suspension, just a base R1 short block, my heads and intake, and a turbocharger.  Running almost every week, testing and tuning along the way Tom got some pretty huge perfomance.  How many stock block, stock chassis Larks can pull the front wheels?  Tom was doing it pretty regularly.  My biggest regret is not getting there to see it in person.  As the season came to an end, the heads were removed from the Lark, picked up by Jeff in Virginia, and currently await their turn at Jeff's for a spa trip to Bill Ford's shop.

  I have been EBay stalking some of the vendors who buy and resell NASCAR parts.  Along the way, I added to my racing nest egg several sets of 7mm stem titanium valves, titanium locks and titanium retainers.  Also a set of Comp Cams' heaviest beehive springs, spring seats and a set of Crower roller lifters.  Bill will cut the new spring seats, add BeCu exhaust seats to improve heat transfer out of the valves, replace the cast ironguides with manganese-bronze valve guides, and cut the intake and exhaust seats for installation of the titanium valves.  Another friend from the Salt2Salt team, Digger, is cutting the titanium valves down to the correct length and diameter.  The goal is a rugged, but very light valvetrain that is capable of swallowing and digesting everything the supercharger will be shoving at it.