360 J heads

If you're getting that for $500 in labor, it's a good price. About $800 of that $1200 is labor. Operations include: disassembly, cleaning, magging, replace guides w/bronze(liners or new inserts), install hardened exh seats, valve job (cutting new seats, setting installed heights, final assembly), trimming guides for dual springs (if liners are used), cutting spring seats for dual spring assemblies, milling deck surface, and milling intake surface to match.

I get that "you live where life's expensive" line a lot. Funny that most performance head shops with good records charge aroudn the same prices regardless of thier location. CT, NY, PA, MI,AZ,CA,WA, FL... I firmly believe its got more to do with the equipment used than any other variable like salary or parts costs. Most of the top of the line valve equipment is upwards of $100K now. On a 7yr payoff/depreciation thats $1200/month with zero percent for one machine. The Serdi that my guy uses was $90K and only cuts the valves themselves. Funny thing is, it cuts them better than the high end manufacturers can (Ferrera, Dell West, etc). The seat cutter was another six figure buy a few years back.