I've had AFR 190cc heads on my '92 LT1 for about the last 35K miles with no oil consumption problems -- I change the Mobile 1 oil every 3K miles and never add any and no smoking.

Is this supposed to be a common problem?

Tom Piper

 

My AFRs were one of the first sets of LT4 heads produced in late 1996. Other than some minor manufacturing faults which I remedied and later AFR remedied in their production (After I advised them) I have had no problems at all. The heads have been on my car since then and has only had the valve springs replaced when I replaced the camshaft earlier this year.

I have two sets of AFR heads coming for two LT4 blower motors. I am not expecting any problems with these heads and I am not hesitant in ordering another set. In fact we are going to be ordering a set of the new LS1 heads for a 6.0L truck project

 

I'm not sure which way you meant that, but consider this also:

When a critical part of an engine fails, such as a valve dropping or breaking and falling, all sorts of other carnage results. The damage can be tremendous and the higher the engine RPM at the time of the failure, the more damage will result.

At high, or in some cases EVEN moderate, RPM, virtually the entire engine assembly could become nothing more than some expensive door-stop material. The block can get windowed, crank, rod(s), pistons, cam, etc. can become useless.

At speed, oil from holes burst in the pan can get deposited under the tires and then it's hallelujah, here we go!

I've seen failures that began on one side of the engine and broken parts end up trashing the other side parts as well, when broken pieces migrated through the intake manifold or via the oil pan.

This following isn't specifically intended for AFR, but for any company that sells parts, the failure of which can result on catastrophic damage.

Let's not confuse QUALITY CONTROL (before the sale/fact) issues with CUSTOMER SERVICE/WARRANTY (after the sale/fact) issues.

To me, the MOST critical and important time is BEFORE the part leaves the factory, not after it's destroyed my engine, wrecked my car and sent me to the hospital/morgue.

Therefore, it's critical for everyone to choose only those parts which have been proven to be reliable and have an excellent quality control record. I don't mean to imply "failure proof" because I don't believe ANY part is actually failure proof, but we certainly shouldn't want to repeatedly see failure reports. Ever consider how a specific part/company gets its bad reputation? Repeated failures.

Remember, whenever you opt to modify your car for increased performance you, at the same time, accept virtually all of the associated risks.

Most, if not all, companies include statements intended to limit their liability. You'll see statements like "While we endeavor to produce a high quality product and invest in the latest state-of-the-art machining equipment, we cannot . . . blah, blah, blah. Which is liability limiting legalese.

You'll also see statements (disclaimer) that a particular part is not warranteed/guaranteed to be fit for a particular purpose. Also, when a company assumes some portion of the liability it is usually limited to only material and workmanship of the company's specific part; not your $2,000 Bow-Tie block, your new JE pistons . . .

Ever read the liability release you have to sign before being allowed to enter the race track? So if a connecting rod breaks, goes flying through the air into the stands and takes your head off, Oh well, Jake was a good guy.

Assumption of risk is what I'm talking about.

Now, for my two cents, it doesn't do me a whole lot of good if a valve breaks/drops and in the process destroys my engine - and maybe me - and to have the effected company ONLY repair or REPLACE the head(s) - usually AT THEIR OPTION.

What about all the costs of replacing all the other parts that were destroyed? Labor, machine work and new parts needed to get the car back up and running again: Who pays for that? Guess who.

Who paid for all the associated expenses (shipping, labor, down-time, gaskets, fluids, etc.) for the guy who bought a set of AFR heads that looked like they had chicken pox?

What about the inconvenience, loss of use and benefit and mental anguish/suffering (a statement you often see in the law-suit documents)? Who compensates you for that? Anyone want to venture a guess?

It's when a company stone-walls and refuses to admit to the failures of their product that Class-Action suits arise.

So, it's okay to read that AFR is willing to examine the head(s), I would expect nothing less. But when time comes to write the check, how big will it be? That's the TRUE test of how well a company stands behind their product.

I'm very interested in reading how this turns out.

Jake

 

If you don't change the valve seals that AFR sends out with the heads to teflon, you should be ok.

 

I have a brand new set of 195's They are the comp package. They came with 10 bad valve guides..

 

Did you contact them to see if they would correct the problem?

 

I agree with this statement 100%. Very curious how this turns out. There are a ton of other costs to consider vs. the cost of the heads, does the head company take any responsibility for them as well?

 

Performance parts are a wonderful thing,most of the time in any industry when production increases,quality decreases,more things that
were not acceptable are suddenly ok.Same goes for aftermarket parts.
When spending big bucks,spend a few more and have parts disassembled and inspected by someone who is very critical of what to
look for.Worked in a manufacturing facility for a short period of time,and thats what happened there.So if you have multiple vendors
supplying parts for one finished component the problem just multiplies.
Just my 2cents

 

If you read the warranty in the back of their catalog you'll see a whole host of restrictions and limitations.

As an example, their warranty is for 90 days.

It does not cover any part that is not manufactured by AFR. So since AFR doesn't wind valve springs, make rocker studs, manufacture valves, etc., those parts must be warranteed by the company that makes them.

To specifically answer your question, "No", none of the other damage or repair costs are covered.

What many companies usually do is (in the name of what they say is their corporate "good-will") repair the damage and install new valve(s), etc. Their decision is on a case by case basis. But don't expect them to cover all the other costs involved.

From their point of view, it just makes good business sense. Without these liability limitations a flood of claims could bankrupt a business.

From the end user's point of view, we're left to swing slowing in the breeze.

That's why it's so critical to stay away from any part that has a high failure rate.

Caveat emptor (probably misspelled) which means "BUYER BEWARE". The buyer alone is responsible for determining the quality of a purchase before plopping down the cash.

Jake

 

Did anyone have to "ding" their Hookers for the AFR's so their plug wires would not burn on the pipes?

I looked at Diabolical Daves AFR 227's at the Funfest and he did not have to ding his Hookers which makes me wonder now,

I ordered L98 plug style AFR 210's and fear they may have sent me the regualr angle plug heads. I have already beat the pi** out of the pipes so I guess it is mute now but now I am curious

 

I remember someone posting that AFR used a slightly different plug angle on some of their heads. That may be the reason for the clearance issue.

Of course, banging headers for clearance isn't something unique to AFR heads. I remember banging on headers from as far back as 1967 when I installed a set on a Pontiac GTO, (or was that in 1970 on the Trans Am?)

I even had to beat-up on the TPIS headers that are on my Vette now.

Jake

 

Yeah, on my 67 GTO I had to ding a new set of headers! You just hate to have to do it!

I will weld in 2 new tubes with ample clearance this winter and re coat them, it'll be sweet then!

 

Hello Again…

I will try and do my best at addressing some of the additional issues discussed in this thread. I apologize for the "length" of this post, but I tried to do my best at covering most of the issues that were brought up here.

SloRvette, you mention the fact you had some problems with Teflon seals and oil consumption. As you had stated, they were not installed by AFR. We don’t use Teflon seals on street heads due to their “over effectiveness” in drying the valve stems, and the fact they are prone to leaking with an “improper” install from being distorted when not put on properly. They are too “rigid” and are not forgiving enough sometimes to properly seal both around the base of the guide as well as the valve stem. We use black, viton rubber valve seals which have been proven to be very effective, provide adequate oiling, and are not as “finicky” to install. I apologize that the AFR representative didn’t touch on this in any of your phone conversations….surely we wouldn’t purposely hide information from you that might have helped your cause. Without knowing who you spoke with, I can only assume it might have been a newer employee in the sales dept.
You also mentioned casting issues which I assume refers to some slight pitting in a few of the castings that we shipped to our customers. This has been an occasional cause for us to scrap a casting or two, especially with the older “tooling” associated with our 23’ SBC line. The good news is that we have made some improvements to our current process and are in the works at designing all new castings and tooling for our entire 23’ SBC line. That will be in place sometime in 2005.
Not sure of what you were referring to regarding “double valve cover gaskets” on center bolt heads except for the fact that with AFR centerbolt applications, a ¼” shorter bolt is required. If a shorter bolt is not used, the valve covers would not have enough “crush” to properly seal the gaskets. The use of a shorter bolt is noted in all of our instructions sent with every cylinder head purchase. By the way, drilling and tapping the bolt hole deeper is not an option due to the risk of hitting the water jacket. We touched on this situation in a previous post on this forum. There were also some occasional issues regarding clearance in centerbolt valve cover applications due to varying material thickness from one casting to the next in the valve cover rail area. We addressed that in January of 2004 by writing a program in the new machining center that would remove that extra material away on the few castings that might have needed it (it would be “cutting air” in the others).
BS and “nickel and dime” items….I can only assume, once again, that you are referring to options such as drilling for temp sensors, heat risers, center bolt valve covers etc. All of these operations formerly required a secondary operation on another machining center as they were not considerations in the tooling when our SBC heads were originally introduced in the 1980’s. This has been addressed as a new production line was established in Jan. 2004 and since then these items have been included at no additional cost. AFR has always tried to offer as many options as possible to the consumer realizing each consumer has their own requirements based on their individual application. Options such as milling, steam holes, upgraded valve springs, etc., are all services we offer to try and supply our customers a “turn key” set of cylinder heads, not a way to extract nickels and dimes from the consumer.

Redfast, you reference a problem with dropping an exhaust valve and subsequently damaging a good deal of engine parts. We would certainly welcome the opportunity to get involved and try and help figure out what might have caused the situation. Get in touch with us if it is not too late to help out

Regarding the cylinder head one of our customers received with the “peppered” head deck (Jake referred to it as “chicken pox”), once again there is more to the story than meets the eye. The customer did not buy the heads direct from AFR, he had in fact purchased them for a local engine shop whom he instructed to mill the heads for increased compression ratio. It wasn’t until the heads were milled that the pitting in the deck became obviously apparent. Admittedly, those heads had some pitting in other areas of the head as well, and should have been caught by our assembly department, as well as quality control and we made no bones about that in the original thread concerning that situation. Those heads should have not left AFR….had the heads been milled here at AFR, it would have been much easier to identify and we would have scrapped the castings and built our customer another set. We did in fact end up building the customer a new set and turned them around in a prompt manner. The customer was satisfied with how we handled the situation and I believe is even happier with the performance results.

As far as header and sparkplug clearance issues, we offer our 23’ SBC heads in four different plug configurations to try and cover as many applications as possible....”Vortec” straight plug, “factory” straight plug, GM “bowtie” angle, and L98 plug angle. With that many options, finding the right header fitment shouldn’t be that difficult, however, the reality is that some header pipe layouts won’t fit anything without some “persuasion” with a hammer, welder, or both. I would venture to say that we offer our customers more choices than many other aftermarket cylinder head manufacturers.

Valve guide issues….An extremely small number of these crop up since we went to automated guide honing almost 4 years ago. Before that, we did have occasional issues, but even then, they were very isolated instances. We did have an issue recently as noted, and were notified of the situation after the customer’s engine builder had already replaced them. We did receive the defective guides back to verify there was a problem. After a lot of chasing around trying to duplicate the problem, we ultimately decided it was caused by operator error during set-up of the heads on the machine.

Regarding the overall message Jake was trying to send home regarding warranty and the extent most company’s are willing to take “warranty issues”, it is true that most companies, ourselves included, will not warranty other parts damaged from a “failure”. The main reason is that in most cases, it is difficult to determine whether the component that failed was actually to blame….Was it due to driver error (too much RPM for instance in the water box), “poor” blower or nitrous tune-ups, error from improper clearances within the engine, or for that matter being negligent and not even checking clearances when doing new engine modifications.
Also, I would like to reiterate that AFR does NOT use “inferior parts” as was implied in a previous post. As I mentioned earlier, all of our heads are fitted with high quality 21-4N one piece stainless valves from vendors such as Manley and REV.

BUT…..The way AFR truly handles our customer’s issues regarding parts failure etc, is much better than our warranty and disclaimers might lead you to believe. We handle every issue on a case by case basis. We thoroughly inspect the parts that come back for telltale signs of improper engine set-up, valve float, etc. If we receive parts back that we cannot find clear cut evidence of customer related issues, we will normally repair the head at no charge, reimburse any freight cost incurred by the customer, supply gaskets to help get the engine back together, and sometimes help getting related damaged components at our cost….We work very closely with the customer and do our best to help get him back on the road as quickly and as cost effectively as possible.

I also feel the need to mention many of the “AFR” problems seem to constantly get “re-hashed” as soon as any type of “negative” public forum becomes available to do so. It seems the same problems from the same customers are replayed over and over again, while in reality, it might have been one or two isolated instances we have already addressed in the past.

In conclusion, I would like to say that there is no such thing as a “mass produced” item that doesn’t have its share of problems at one time or another….no matter how much “QC” is implemented to try and avoid it. Whether it be an “ounce of prevention” or a pound, every company is capable of having a problem with the product. We have implemented changes and will continue to do (some of them based on input from you guys), continually striving for perfection and a day in the future where every head we ship is flawless and free of imperfections. We do not have “our heads in the sand” regarding problems and do everything we can to address them and implement change so they may never happen again….BUT when problems do arise, we hope that you will give us an opportunity to address the situation, re-establish your trust in our products, and hopefully, earn your future business as well as those of your friends and peers.


Sincerely,
Tony Mamo


PS “87Z-ya”, I currently have not had the opportunity to speak with you personally….please contact me at your earliest convenience, however, I will be out of town on business till Thursday September 30th. You can contact me at (818)890-0616 Ext. 109

 

I normally stick to browsing the C3 forum (i own a 1979 stingray), but sometimes i venture out over to the other sections. And this post just stuck out to me as an EXCELLANT example of great customer service, it seems like AFR is trying their best to help out anyone that has had a problem with their heads, and that they are more than wiling to help you sort things out. Id just like to say congrats for AFR for providing such good customer service and feedback