Edelbrock Victor 440 Cylinder-Head Test

Back on the dyno at JMS, the engine made 692 hp at 6,400 rpm and 637 lb-ft at 4,900. That's a 74hp and 40-lb-ft increase with a change of cylinder heads only. Yes, the compression ratio went from 10.5:1 to 11.0:1 because of the chamber-size reduction, and that may have contributed some power, but not overly so.

Studying the dyno sheets, we noticed the engine was pulling 2.1 inches of mercury at peak rpm. It was obvious that the new high-flow Victor 440 heads were straining our poor old 850 carb, and it couldn't keep up. With a little more air, we thought there might be some more power left, so we bolted on a Holley 1,000-cfm HP carb for the test and did another pull. With the larger carb, the engine made 711 hp at 6,400 rpm and 641 lb-ft at 5,100 rpm.

With a cylinder-head change and a carburetor upgrade, we gained 93 hp from our baseline pull without any porting. The torque curve looked more like a table top than a curve. Over 600 lb-ft of torque was available from 4,100 rpm to 6,100 rpm; that's a 2,000-rpm sweep.

In box-stock form, these heads can be bolted on your mildly built 440, and you won't kill the low-rpm performance, but there's plenty of material to play with if you want to step it up. The best part is that all this was done with only a very slight increase in cost over the Performer RPM head.