Ported Edelbrock versus W2 out of the box !

Slight hijack......
The tale of two flow benches.......
Similar capacity benches, operating on the same basic design, but not the same bench manufacturer.

Intake:
Lift———A/B
.100—-70.5/67.5
.200—139.1/142.8
.300—203.2/207.6
.400—237.5/241.2
.500—252.8/256.1
.600—255.5/260.6

Exhaust:
Lift——- A/B
.100—-76.1/57.1
.200—124.3/111.0
.300—159.3/150.0
.400—177.4/167.1
.500—179.3/170.8
.600—181.4/174.4

What’s interesting to me is one bench shows higher on the intake, the other shows higher on the exhaust.
The other thing is, the low lift exhaust flow on bench A is in la-la land(why would the exhaust outflow the intake port at that lift, with its 14.5% less flow area?)
On the intakes, the two benches are within 2-2.5% at all lifts.
On the exhaust there is a 33% discrepancy at .100 lift, and 12% at .200 lift....... tapering off to 4.5% at .600 lift.
The intake curves would be very close, the exhaust not so much.

But, to bring it back on topic....... if all you’re looking to do is build a 408-422” stroker to make 575hp or less, i’ll take the “cheaper and easier to get parts for, closed chamber for good quench, doesnt need expensive offset rockers, uses normal headers” RPM heads.
The valvetrain cost has always been a barrier to the w2 especially the long valve version.
I stayed with it because I made the investment to all the other needed specialty parts 20 years ago lol. Sort off all your eggs in one basket.
But if starting from scratch the edelbrock cost versus performance
Does look very attractive. The thing to remember is that the w2 was designed from the beginning as an all out race head and its original goal was to get the pushrods out of the way to make the ports bigger which required a dedicated valvetrain.
Having said that, I too am surprised at the performance levels some guys are getting with the edelbrock, especially Pittsburgh racer, getting high 9,s. Low 10.00s being very common with a stroker build.
Not sure how much benefit to the closed chamber in a stroker build.
Some closed chamber designs are shrouding the intake airflow.