W2's

Let see…drawbacks to W2 heads.

They are iron.

Intake ports are small for anything over about 360 inches and definitely too damn small if you want to make power at 8k plus.

The exhaust port/valve is on the big side for most everything. You have to deal with that. Making the exhaust port bigger is a guaranteed power killer. But it will look great on a flow sheet.

There are basically three manifolds. The Strip Dominator, the MP tunnel ram which has serious plenum issues and the Holley Pro Dominator. Good luck finding any one of those. I paid $850 for my PD and was glad to do it.

18 degree valve angle and low port angle makes getting the short turn/valve job tricky at best. Chrysler tried to address with with the W5 but it’s was marginally better than the W2 when it could have been far better. Thats what the W7 did.

The good about the W2?

Port cross section. The intake port is substantially better than any other conventional head out there. That includes the Speed Master, Trick Flow and any other head that uses a conventional intake rocker arm. Flow numbers be damned, not ONE of those heads will ever make the power of a W2. Ever.

Offset intake rocker. I know this is hard to swallow but GET OVER IT. If you want to make horsepower, and you are trying to do it with a head that uses a standard intake rocker you might as well smash your balls with a hammer for a while. You’ll get the same results.

That non-offset rocker gets the pushrod right in the way. Contrary to all the guru’s who say the pushrod pinch doesn’t matter, the science and the industry says it sure as hell does.

Go find ANY cylinder head designed to make horsepower and I double damn guarantee you it won’t have a giant pushrod pinch. Chrysler got it. That’s why the T/A head used an offset rocker and moved pushrod. They we’re NOT idiots. They got it. And the W2 was the next development along those lines.

So stop bitching about offset rockers and realize that’s how you make horsepower.

Along those lines, the milled stands and block rocker system is FAR better than the saddle style rocker mounts. It’s not even close.

I was dumbfounded when Indy produced cylinder heads and used a saddle. What a stupid waste. There just isn’t enough support with the saddle mounts.

The W2 uses offset blocks and shafts so you can get the geometry correct AND have room for a decent valve spring. You can do close to the same with the B3 correction kit, but at high RPM the block system is far more stable.

The exhaust port is a good shape. As I said above, it’s right on the edge of being too big. Any grinding on the exhaust port needs to be at the very minimum or you’ll kill power.

Thats about all I can think of right now. For all its faults, the W2 is STILL the king of low port, 18 degree small block Chrysler heads.

It’s sad that over the decades guys just never got past the offset rocker nonsense. And it STILL prevails today. And that’s sad. And stupid.