Josh, I wasn't a designer. The plant where I worked remanufactured,
assembled, and functional tested all Chrysler computer modules. I did every
job in the plant over time, from component level repair to soldering,
diagnostics, and eventually running the Mopar Tech Hotline for fuel
injection. Before I worked there, I was a Weapons Systems guy in an A-10
Warthog squadron in the Air Force.
I did not take any pics of the head before it was installed. But I could
shoot some pics down the throat of the T-body. The dimples are there to
break up the boundary layer. It's pretty complicated aerodynamically, but
suffice it to say that it "virtually enlarges" the port size. You see
raindrops slowly crawling along a glass surface when driving right? Well,
air does the same thing inside an engine. If there is a small amount of
turbulence, the surface layer of air (boundary layer) breaks up into tiny
vortices like ball bearings. There are a lot of people who disagree with
this. Mostly old school hot-rodders. I respect these guys, don't get me
wrong. But NASA wind tunnels and Formula One engine builders support the
theory of boundary layer separation. Of course, in my case, I would need
before and after dyno runs to prove anything and I don't have that. The
engine ran so poorly when I bought the truck, that it would hardly pull
itself. I just had some spare heads lying around and figured I would give
it a try. As far as the grooves, all I can say is that I am running
significantly higher base timing advance and compression with no pinging on
87 octane, and the engine will idle at 400 rpms if I want it to.
I am about to go out to my shop and use a sawzall to chop off the catalytic
converter and make it into a lamp or something. Maybe that will help as
well.
Greg K. Cooper
Huntsville, Alabama
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