Little bit of a rant about Mopar heads...

LXguy said
...So, I've been trying to get a pair of 308 heads, and a pair of 302 heads. I've been combing the scrapyards for engines, poring through Craigslist, etc.

I have 12 308 heads. ELEVEN of them are cracked between the seats, most of them on every cylinder. The highlight here is that one motor only had about 80K on it, and one of the heads was clearly a reman unit. It was cracked also.

I merely have 6 of the 302 heads, but have not found a single good one yet. Just bought a pair out of Colorado off of Ebay, but the guy refunded my money because when checking them before shipment found that they were cracked too!

It would be a real kick in the nads to spend Stock money on a pair of heads just to have them crack. its seriously making me rethink this foolish idea.

I think Ma Mopar gets a big frigging FAIL on the induction hardening already. I can't believe they actually got all the way to the current hemi engine before putting in hardened valve seats LIKE EVERYONE ELSE has been doing for years.

...The only useful bit of info here is that I would recommend nobody ever pay shipping on a pair of these Mopar heads that haven't been thoroughly magnafluxed.

I've only had one pair of 308's, from a member here, off a low milage wrecked truck. Paid for them, shipped them home, paid my machine shop to clean and magneflux them, and scrapped both of them. Been running X, J, and even old 273 heads, HARD, for decades. No problems yet. Typically, you throw one out of two 360 heads away since 73, when they started induction hardening the exhaust seats. Run too lean? Run too hot? Exhaust flapper valve stuck shut? I don't know. All I know is that I don't start putting dime one in a set of heads untill they pass magneflux. I do have 2 sets of virgin 302's that passed and one set that I had to get a replacement for, it will need exhaust seats and bigger intakes to be good. Not much use on a 273. I've also scrapped a set of 302's. I think I'll just get hardened exhaust seats for my old heads and be done for the next 40 years. I feel better now, too. Just for the record, Chevys are even worse.