The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Integral manifold head for a 292

Does anyone out there have practical knowledge of the late integral head as far as how it flows and combustion chamber size etc. I am thinking of putting one on the 292 I am putting in my 36 1 1/2 ton. I want the dual throat carb and dual exhaust. Any thing to be gained over the stock 292 setup other than a nice sound?

All I remember about those is that we replaced them with an earlier head and manifold setup whenever on came in with problem,they seemed to crack frequently in heavy usage in delivery vehicles and at the highway department garage I used to work at.Even the 250's in pickups had their share.Stick with an older head and run an aftermarket manifold and header.

I agree with Thermodyne. Those heads were a major pain in the behind. replace it with an earlier type set-up.

There are a lot of differences in accessory mounting between the two heads and probably in water pumps as well. These heads do have a bad reputuation for cracking, but GM had finally gotten around to doing some flow bench testing with this head, and incorporated some lump porting to enhance the flow characteristics. If you can find an integral head in decent condition, and get around the accessory mounting issues, it might make an OK setup. But the typical installation goes the opposite way, guys dump the integral heads and go to the earlier version so they can use headers, four barrel intakes etc.
Over at the Inliners site we have a project going to list all the late heads at head index
Our sources don't list an integral head for the 292 but it's still a work in progress and we may have missed a source. It may help you some.

Jack
www.inliners.org

Dennis--

I never used the intregal head. Conventional wisdom ,as indicated here, is that the head is prone to cracking. I did have a 71 C-10 with the 250 earlier head and seperate manifold. I had problems with manifold warpage even with that rig. Twice, I had to replace the exhaust manifold due to cracking or severe warping of the manifold. Finding those manifolds aint easy either--many are warped or cracked and most of the junkyard inline sixes in my part of the country are being wholesaled to Mexico. Gud luk--I wud opt for the seperate manifold.