I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Florida I've seen Chevy commercials in Spanish. They seem to compare the new Cobolt to a Corvette.

 

I went to see my guy tonight to have him get me a US head. Anyway, I found out as he was assembling one there. He gets these unassembled and puts teflon seals, and various other crane parts and thoroughly goes over the heads before assembling them with his parts. I feel much better now in knowing that I didn't get an assembly line head. So I guess I have a asian-american head since the only chinese part is the casting. LOL

 

#1 My source regarding the quality of American built cylinder heads is a very well respected automotive machinist who works with performance heads from ALL manufacturers day-in and day-out. My comment on AFR goes back to this thread:
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...ht=AFR+tooling

Pro 1's are not particularly 'cheap' (read inexpensive) heads by any means.

Did I say the Chinese heads were any good anywhere in my post? If so please quote where I did. I said was that I was told that anyone who buys assembled heads from ANY manufacturer is a fool to assume that they were properly built and just bolt them in their car.

Would an American manufacturer fix my $5000.00 engine if it swallowed a valve? Would Dart have replaced my motor, if I hadn't gone to the trouble and expense to get the BRAND NEW heads remachined before bolting them to my motor? The story the machinist related to me to prove his point concerned a local racer who popped an assembled set Edelbrock Performer RPM heads in his car right out of the box. A valve stuck in a guide and 'kissed' a piston. Guess who ISN'T paying for his $5000 engine? Is Edelbrock another 'exception' to the American quality rule like Dart?

4 other personal encounters I've had with American manufacturers.
#1 the 1 year old original ZZ3 engine in the car when I bought it started burning oil 6 months after I bought the car. It turns out piston ring lands on many of the pistons broke. My support from GMPP:
Them:"You over-revved the engine"
Me: "I have a 6000rpm MSD rev limiter in the car. (redline on a ZZ3 is 6200rpm)"
Them: "You over-advanced the timing"
Me: "The timing was set 32 deg maximum advance".
Them: "Oh well..."

#2 Bowtie Performance built me a 383 in which the crankshaft was .010 OVER the size of the main bearings AFTER they had worn through to the steel. Lesson from that one: "If you're Canadian, don't buy a crate motor from the US, since they know you won't go through the expense / customs hassle to ship it back, and will put an according amount of TLC into your product.

#3 Holley Commander 950 TBI kit that:
- required an hour of hand filing to remove casting flash
- took about a year to get running properly because of buggy software that crashed regularly (and toasted my fuel map several times), and their totally useless manual and tech support that provided totally incorrect installation & setup procedures. At least they seemed to have improved this product somewhat.

#4
Supposedly hardened yoke from Zip Corvette products in which the groove wore out to the point of .125 endplay in under 6 months. (or maybe it was oversize right from the start...)

I bought my 'Vette from a local Corvette guru who has restored dozens of Corvettes over the past 30 years. The quality fit and finish of my car has almost nothing to do with the quality of the original vehicle. My car will outperform an original '77 Corvette in any contest you would care to throw at it.

I now adhere to the following rules:
- don't trust anything you buy from anyone to be of high quality
- do as much of the work as possible yourself
- if you are going to buy something that requires more equipment/technical skill than you have, buy it locally so you can personally deal with the seller personally if anything goes wrong.

I have only owned 4 vehicles my 24 years of owning vehicles:
- '82 Cavalier, '88 Sprint, '93 Beretta GTZ (still drive it), '77 Corvette.
Do you see a trend here (think Bowtie...)

Food for thought:
What's more 'Canadian', a Honda Civic built in Alliston Ontario, or a Chevy Aveo built in Korea?

I am a manufacturing systems developer and just about the last person who would buy overseas parts for my car. The unfair trade practices with Asia that both the US and Canada allow burn me to no end. The tool and mold shops in this area are closing right left and centre because their customers (Canadian and American companies...) are outsourcing the work to China. Right now there is a big quality gap, but remember when '*** scrap' used to be a common phrase? They'll catch on to the quality thing sooner or later and it's up to us to be a few notches better yet.

 

We have a white collar canadian telling me, a blue collar american worker that all american built heads are junk and then generalizing that american made goods are also inferior. My comment that AFR heads are the best out of the box heads still stands. They have been stand up guys and when they have issues, as any manufacturer does they do the right thing and let you know there is a problem and offer to fix it at their expense. Don't know why I am even having this discussion, your comments are insulting to me and other working class americans that do their best to produce high quality products in a global market and still try to maintain a living wage. You need to buy that canadian built Honda, maybe they produce a better quality product than GM. MAN AM I PI$$ED!!! That is not my thumb!!!

 

Corporate greed supported by government policy that supports special interests but also supported by a very large section of the american people including blue collar workers. How many of you have 401K accounts with the more lucrative international funds in the portfolio?
A large portion of these funds wind up in asia.

 

I am right there with you....

 

You may be PI$$ED!!!, but you obviously haven't wasted thousands of dollars on 'high quality American products', as I have. Stop trying to turn this into a Canada/US or white collar/blue collar thing. Your personal insults are really a joke and show that you obviously know nothing about me, or my background. I'm out of this waste of time discussion.

 

Easy solution. DON'T BUY JUNK American products. See if you can find quality that meets your expectations built somewhere else. Good luck with that! As for me I BUY AMERICAN!!!

 

One option to consider are Superflow heads. They are made in Australia and sell for about the same price on Ebay. Seem to be good quality.

 

I have personally observed this on both GMPP & Mopar aluminum head crate motors' head casting. Take a good look at many "USA" crate motors' aluminum head castings ... look for the word/logo Zeus. Care to speculate where your "USA" crate motor heads are made? Could it be in the lap of Canada's "mother"? You decide.

FYI, Zeus was acquired by Caparo in 2006

http://www.caparo.co.uk/ca.htm

http://www.themanufacturer.com/uk/de...contents_id=52

 

I have no doubt that there all kinds of foreign parts in gm crate engines! I have a Jeep that is made in my home state of Ohio. Since the Germans bought Jeep there all kinds of foreign stuff in it.
I would also bet that even some of the American cylinder heads companies are using some foreign parts in there heads for the cheaper models.
I am sticking with my opinion of if you buy a head get it bare and have it assembled by a local guy you trust no matter what brand and with parts that you choose!

 

Cool, I will keep everyone updated on these heads and there performance.

 

One of the more widely-respected names in valves is Ferrea ... I use them in some ct motors ... I've never had a Ferrea fail. Typically, Ferrea is known as a "USA" company. http://www.ferrea.com/index.php

However, I have personally observed this when unpacking some Ferrea valves. Some of the individual cellophane packs were clearly printed either "Product of Argentina" or "Product of Brazil" ... I honestly don't recall which country but it was one or the other.

 

Jackson,correct me if I'm wrong,but are not Mahle(sp?)pistons made in Brazil also?Another widely respected name.

 

We want the world for free...

We expect the absolute best for the lowest price possible, this is capitalism, which is simple to understand. Lower cost labor is only a natural extention of this principle, if you want something but want to buy cheap then you get what has been made either cheaply or well made in a cheap labor market, no other way around it.

Is it the corporations fault? Hardly, the Consumer? You got it. Corps just provide what we ask for, i.e. Walmart

You want to support our workforce, pay more and buy American, you want to pay less, buy made in elsewhere. Either way just accept what you are doing as having a direct consequence on your or your kids future and move on, there's no one to blame but ourselves for any of this.

OK my soapbox time is up, next...