Hey Lost.....I wish you woulda called me before you threw your money out the window. Not to dog Edelbrock but these heads are MASS produced and I have seen them come out of box with way to close on the tolarance's. I can't remember if you were running a jetdrive or outdrive but in either case 130 degree's is not enough heat to cause your guides to expand. You had several factor working against you as I indicated with my email I sent you. To tight of clearances and high rpm spell trouble in just a matter of time. Your problem was the domino effect. One thhing triggered a sequence of events. Even though your running what is consider to you as a family boat,I noticed that before you had your latest problem, you reported 5200 rpm. In my opinion,here comes the comments from the peanut gallery, no matter what the motor is wrapped in I.E: deck boat, flattie or picklefork, it needs to be built to turn those rpm. In your email you said that the motor was like 8.9:1 or 9.2:1. With aluminum heads, you could have run a bit more compression due to the heat disapation features of aluminum heads and still been ok on pump gas provided that the carb and timing were setup right. With what your doing with this particular boat, I would have sent your iron heads out and had them ported and polished with maybe a port match but thats about it. If you just gotta have aluminum heads than I would have gotten a set of Brodix or Darts ( I have several pair on the shelves of each) and ordered them with a little smaller chamber volume to bump the compression about 1/2 a point or so. Of course you would have to setup your ignition and carb as well but thats no big deal. Shoot, my wife can set up an MSD if I tell her what curve I want for a particular motor. (I ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK IT WHEN SHE'S NOT LOOKIN!!!!!) give me a call..I emailed you my number.
[This message has been edited by BLOWNDRAGBOAT (edited September 08, 2001).]