KRE’s New Super Wedge Pontiac Cylinder Head Testing

LOOK OUT! Here comes the NEW KRE Super Wedge Pontiac Cylinder head!

You would think that in these cold winter months there would be some “down time” at Kauffman Racing Equipment…. Well that is just not so! Mark and Jeff Kauffman have been hard at work machining and installing a pair of their new Super Wedge heads on a test engine so that they could get some initial numbers on the new heads.

Jeff Kauffman stated that “yes this is a lot of effort to build an engine to test these new heads but it just HAS to be done – we need to make sure this product works the way it should before we release it to the public”. That being said the 540 dyno mule was fired up, warmed up and testing began. As the engine warmed up we talked to Mark Kauffman about the combo being tested. He stated “this is not an optimal combo as we used a variety of parts we had in house”. Mark stated this was a 541 cid engine with a 50 mm cam with .842 lifters. This was certainly not a MAX effort NA combo as far as KRE is concerned.

The heads themselves are AS CAST Super Wedges with 2.250 intake and 1.800 exhaust valves. The valves are 6.900 long, which is a bit longer than the High Port heads. Another interesting note was the pushrod length being 10.850 long. 7/16 double taper unites were used. Compression ratio was about 16 to one on this combo and with that very efficient KRE head chamber, the total timing was set to 32 degrees. That is where peak power was made as well.

So what kind of numbers did they get?

The single 4bbl combo 1150 cfm Dominator made 926.8 horsepower at 6900 rpm and peak torque was 777.4 at 5300 rpm

The dual 4 combo (KRE dual 4 intake with two 1050 dominators) made 937.8 horsepower at 7000 rpm and peak torque was 785.9 at 5800 rpm

Not too shabby for the first Super Wedge combo ever! The Kauffman’s expect a fully ported set of Super Wedges to flow in the 475 range. Time will tell as these heads have already been ripped off this engine and thrown into one of KRE’s CNC machine. Can’t wait for round 2 of testing – Fully Ported Super Wedges!