{"id":72029,"date":"2020-05-01T10:12:52","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T17:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=72029"},"modified":"2020-05-01T10:12:52","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T17:12:52","slug":"head-games-inside-the-brodix-bb-3-xtra-lineup-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/head-games-inside-the-brodix-bb-3-xtra-lineup-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Head Games: Inside The Brodix BB-3 XTRA Lineup Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photo Credits: Wayne Scraba<\/p>\n

The advancements in today\u2019s race engine technology have led to performance improvements once thought completely impossible.\u00a0 The big key has to be cylinder head development.\u00a0 Not that long ago, performance gains in the cylinder head department were the result of extremely expensive, heavy hand-reworking and sometimes extensive welding of OEM head castings. And for most folks, doing something like this was also next to impossible.\u00a0 It sometimes took more than one skilled head porter to get the job done.\u00a0 And those guys didn\u2019t come cheaply and they sure weren\u2019t common.\u00a0 Most were so busy, no matter who you were, you had to get in line.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t so much the case today, at least for the common Joe.\u00a0 All you have to do is you is key in what you want in an internet search; pick up the phone and order the heads of choice.\u00a0 Better still, a large chunk of the racing technology can be directly incorporated into something like a street-strip car.<\/p>\n

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Many aftermarket cylinder heads offer raised exhaust ports \u2013 this Brodix BB-3 XTRA 345 being one of them.\u00a0 If you want to keep the headers you have (for an engine with stock exhaust port location), then you should take a look at Brodix\u2019s Race Rite lineup.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That surely sounds simple.\u00a0 But hold for one minute. If you survey the cylinder head market, you\u2019ll quickly discover it\u2019s jam-packed with capable cylinder heads. The choices available out there are almost infinite.\u00a0 And instead of being easy, the selection process can become muddy to say the least.\u00a0 Equally important, just because there are inexpensive high flowing ported heads out there, it doesn\u2019t mean all work well.\u00a0 So what\u2019s right for a little guy?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a wide open question, but the reality is if you\u2019re in the market and want to buy a set of heads, then the first to do is to identify the mission. Companies such as Brodix (https:\/\/brodix.com<\/a>) offer cylinder heads for everything from a take-no-prisoners power adder match race car to a daily driver and everything in between.\u00a0 On the cylinder head front, Brodix offers cylinder heads for Big Block Chevys, LS Chevys, Small Block Chevys, 90-degree V6 Chevys, Small Block Fords, \u00a0Small Block Mopars, Big Block Mopars along with spec race series jobs.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s a good comparison of exhaust ports: That\u2019s a Brodix Race Rite on the left while the bare casting on the right is a Brodix BB-2 Plus head.\u00a0 It\u2019s similar to a BB-3 XTRA 345 in that the port is raised 0.600-inch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Take the case of what is unquestionably the most popular engine in drag racing today:\u00a0 The big block Chevy.\u00a0 There are hundreds of heads available for the venerable rat motor.\u00a0 And the folks from Brodix offer a huge number themselves:\u00a0 They range from itsy-bitsy 270 (or so) cc oval port direct replacement jobs (Race Rite series) to monster 515 cc spread port heads capable of feeding 800 + cubic inch engine combinations.\u00a0 Brodix even offers two different rolled over (deck) conventional port location heads that dominate the Texas Pro Stock class.\u00a0 \u00a0And just to make it more interesting, the majority of spread port BBC heads sprang from Brodix\u2019 early involvement with Pontiac Pro Stock development in the Eighties.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to see that fancy is easy today.\u00a0 But for the little guy (this writer included) there\u2019s trouble brewing. That\u2019s because there\u2019s so much choice, it\u2019s easy to make a mistake on head selection. Allow me to explain:<\/p>\n

If you have a pretty good combination and you want to update it with new heads, there are some real hard considerations.\u00a0 Take the 540-inch BBC I\u2019m slowly assembling. I required a set of heads that moved sufficient air to feed it at 7500 or so RPM.\u00a0 They had to be conventional in layout (no spread ports) and the engine combination had to be somewhat streetable (not a daily driver though). At first, I wanted to keep the headers I had.\u00a0 That meant the exhaust port had to be in a location that was close to stock.<\/p>\n

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This is the intake side of that same Brodix Race Rite BB-2 Plus head.\u00a0 Note it is as-cast and for reference, we\u2019ve placed a Brodix CS 301 gasket on the face.\u00a0 If you look closely, this head is designed to work with the extra intake bolt found between Siamese intake ports on stock (and some aftermarket) Chevy manifolds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The big elephant in the room was most likely header fit.\u00a0 You see, a very (very<\/u>) large percentage of heads sold today take advantage of raised exhaust ports.\u00a0 They\u2019re great news because they can easily be made to flow very well.\u00a0 Some manufacturers even make raised exhaust ports standard across the board.\u00a0 That\u2019s where the trouble can really percolate.\u00a0 You see, raising an exhaust port by a mere \u00bc-inch or so can pretty much ruin header fit in plenty of cars, no matter what some folks tell you.\u00a0 To make headers fit in some applications, you\u2019ll either have to heavily squash the tubes or move them (not fun).\u00a0 Or buy new headers.\u00a0 That presents another problem.\u00a0 There are few \u201cshelf\u201d headers available to fit raised ports.\u00a0 And how could there be?\u00a0 The manufacturers would have to offer headers for myriad raised port dimensions (just think of the combinations for just 0.250 taller, 0.300 taller, 0.500-inch and 0.600-inch taller-than-stock ports times the number of potential chassis combinations).\u00a0 That means you\u2019re often stuck with custom headers.<\/p>\n

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This is a closer look at the D-shaped exhaust port on a Race Rite.\u00a0 Next issue, we\u2019ll dig deeper into exhaust ports. It\u2019s important and you might be surprised at the info laid out.\u00a0 Watch for it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brodix had me covered here. Their Race Rite lineup places the exhaust port in the stock location.\u00a0 The intake port choices are more diverse. Race Rites for big blocks can be had in a huge array of configurations, ranging from the previously mentioned 270-cc oval port jobs all the way up to 355 cc examples based upon Brodix\u2019s own BB-2 Xtra series. They also offer Race Rite heads in two examples that are rolled over.\u00a0 That means the valve angle measures 24-degrees instead of the stock 26-degrees. One of those heads has intake ports based upon the Brodix BB-3 Xtra O. It only measures 298 cc\u2019s in intake volume, but it flows over 390 CFM.\u00a0 The other is a much larger 345 cc head with the intake port based upon the Brodix BB-3 Xtra 345. It flows well over 415 CFM right out of the box.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s certainly not the end of it (far from it in fact). Next issue we\u2019ll look at how those Race Rite BB-3 XTRA 345\u2019s compare to a raised port example.\u00a0 The numbers generated by the folks at Brodix are considerable.\u00a0 Watch for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The advancements in today\u2019s race engine technology have led to performance improvements once thought completely impossible.\u00a0 The big key has to be cylinder head development.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":72030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5008,17,3470],"tags":[4011,5717,4008,41,461,321],"class_list":["post-72029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engine","category-guest-column","category-news","tag-brodix","tag-cylinder-heads","tag-guest-column","tag-news","tag-tech-tips-2","tag-wayne-scraba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/1-min-scaled-e1588353083939.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-iJL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72036,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72029\/revisions\/72036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}