> Are there any alloy cylinder heads and suitable inlet manifolds available
> for the 351 cleveland engine.
Yes. Your choices are:
CHI - Australian aluminum cylinder head with quench Cleveland chamber,
4V valves, and an intermediate (between 2V and 4V) port size. Being
marketed in the U.S as a "3V" head by a couple of Pantera vendors,
importing through Mike Fielder. The casting I held looked nice but the
price is surprising, given the exchange rate. The CHI heads are
interesting but too new to tell. The exhaust port is raised so custom
headers may be required in some applications and the intake port floor
is raised and narrowed. I'll need to make a port template before I can
tell what intakes will work and how far the exhaust is raised.
Ford Motorsport A3, B351, C302B (a.k.a. high ports) - Cleveland quench
chamber, uses 4V valve train bits and pistons, requires Motorsport,
Roush, or Edelbrock intakes (several different intakes were made for
Cleveland, Windsor, and SVO blocks), best compatibity but of production.
Still can be found used. Very popular with the Pantera crowd. A3's and
B351's flow well out of box, C302's require porting.
Brodix - clone of C302B modified to require Yates type rollershaft
system. Sold unported so requires porting.
Blue Thunder - Combines a Cleveland quench chamber with (ported) Yates
ports. Ports are similar to a Chapman ported SC1 head. Uses 4V valve
train bits, valve locations and valve angles so Cleveland style pistons
work fine. Requires specific SC1 type intake and headers. Stuffed 4V
exhaust port optional. Seemingly a good option but discussions with
head porters and Art Francis (of Blue Thunder) suggest they are race
only heads and need high RPM and/or lots of cubes to keep the mixture
velocity up. Even though the inlet area is less than a 4V, the ports
do not taper and the bowls are very large so flow velocity is low until
RPM is up.
Yates - replaced Motorsport high port family (A3, B351, C302B).
Originally optimized for very high compression restrictor plate
applications. Different chambers and valve angles/sizes. Requires
custom everything and extensive porting. Various versions (C3, C3L,
C3H, SC1) with different port size, port location, valve size, chamber
size, etc.
Aluminum 4V - 4V copies in aluminum made by Ford back in the '70's.
Exceedingly rare.
ARAO - makes a 4 valve per cylinder head to fit stock 4V (4 venturi,
as in 4 barrel carb) manifolds. Interesting, very expensive and
you can count the number they've actually made on one hand (probably
with digits missing). Will make them for 2V, high port, Windsor or
anything else it appears.
>I heard the SVO Yates cylinder heads can be modified to fit, but just
>what has to be done to achieve this?
You don't want to use Yates. They bolt up but everything else (pistons,
rockers, pushrods, valves, headers, etc.) is Yates-specific. Also Yates
heads are sold as unported castings and need some time on a CNC machine
(lots of metal removed) to flow the sort of numbers expected. A friend
has a set of the latest SC1's (technically a separate casting form the
Yates C3H and C3L) and is in to them for $7000 (Chapman ported) but they
do flow big numbers. The best bet is still a set of used A3/B351/C302
with matching intake.
>Would like to build a good street spec motor about 450h/p+, can anyone
>recommend a suitable cam spec.
Yes but will need to know the rest of the parts first. Suggest a solid
lifter cam and use
oil restrictors.
>What h/p are the crank and rods good for.
450 HP is no problem. Neither is 7000+ RPM. Usual prep work and ARP
rod bolts.
>There doesn`t seem to be much performance parts available, for these
>engines.
Practically everything is available for the Cleveland, you just have to
know where to look. Prices on all the basic stuff are comparable to
Windsor, except for aluminum heads. No plug and play aluminum heads for
a couple of reasons. First, the 4V's flow nearly 300 CFM stock so no need
to buy aftermarket heads to make big HP like you do with Windsors. Second,
Cleveland heads evolved into race-oriented heads compatiblity not an issue.
Dan Jones