jrostocki

Ok here is the story. For the past two years I have been ocassionally helping a friend of mine as a pit member on his Pro Mod corvette. At the track I met Steve Drummond (drummondracecars.com) who is a great guy, and the builder of Sal Patels Viper. Steve also races a Pro Mod mustang that he built and I believe he won the Northeast Pro Mod series for 2012. For those of you that dont know anything about that car just google it and you can get up to speed. It is one hell of a build! One night when we were out I started talking to him about the valve issues with the LS7 motors and if he could do some work on my heads. After seeing what he did with Sals car and seeing his Pro Mod mustang I felt stupid asking "if he felt comfortable" working on the LS7. Anyway after a few hours of conversations I am dropping off my heads to him next week and we will see where this leads. I know that I have opened a big can of worms because he is already talking about changing valve sizes and all sorts of other crazy sh**!!! I dont want to spend crazy $$$ on a big build, just a few tweaks to the heads and bigger cam. I will update this with some pics of his shop next week when I drop off the heads to his shop.

Random84

Well, if you go to a surgeon for something, odds are they'll recommend surgery. Go to an internist and odds are they'll prescribe something.

If you go to a high-end engine builder, you're probably going to get some high-end recommendations - and the bill to go along with it.

clogan

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, LOL!

RedZ4me

As YOU want to do - keep it simple and keep it under YOUR control.

titletaker

With the amount of qualified reputable shops in your area, I would keep it simple. Once you open the can of worms and go down the road I think he might be taking you, your car will be a race car and not very streetable: not to mention the costs are likely to become a lot more than you may be willing to spend.
I would take some time and write down a list of goals you have for your car as well as your intended budget and then talk to a few shops and see who is the best it. The biggest name isn't always the best fit.

Corvette0096

jrostocki

Steve is a good guy and doesn't do the high pressure sales thing. He is just excited about working on a new project !

jrostocki

I have done a ton of research on this and I know exactly what needs to be done. The goal of this is to let Steve experiment with my heads and see what happens

RichieRichZ06

If they were my heads, I'd be sending them to a shop that builds LS7 heads, not Viper race cars.

dun4791

Thought Underground Racing built the worlds fastest Vipers.

jrostocki

Wow tough crowd - this all stated because I went to big corvette shop that quoted almost 4k just to take off the heads and send them out to another corvette specialist and at the end of the day all I needed was the valves and guides replaced. I just thought it was nuts to send my heads to a far away machine shop just for a valve job and guides. I started asking for recommendations for local machine shops and found local machine shops to what I considered basic work. Steve was originally going to just replace the valves and do a valve job - but I decided to let him experiment with my heads just to see if he could apply some "race car" tricks to my heads. Sometimes it's good to be a pioneer- but I also know that sometimes pioneers are the first to get shot

briancb1

There are LOTS of cylinder head/inductions specialists outside of our little corvette Internet community. Nothing is new about replacing valve guides or any port work honestly.

If he is a champion amongst professional race cars, I'm sure he can do as good or probably better than shops that just work on non-professional hobby/weekend/street cars... Which cater to 99.9% of us including myself.

Just my lowly .02... Beyond that, take control of your budget and good luck!

Keep us posted bro.

Corvette0096

http://www.sonnysracingengines.com/

If you want it to be really fast

Random84

Well, to be fair - there's more peer pressure here than your local high school. To some extent, there are a lot of smart people on the forum, but they also tend to feel that their way is the Right Way - and thus, the only way. It's hard to do, but you can't take the internet too seriously.