8445 oil test heads from g body parts good or bad?

[farmer Gary]

got a set of heads from g body parts around 16 or 17 years ago. took them to a machine shop to have them refreshed and ready to install,, valves grinned, spring pressure checked , flatness and head gasket surface resurfaced due to some light rust pitting.
Machinist call me and said after checking withe the local Buick dealer that Quote " oil test heads are severely over heated due to the test conditions and the would crack and destroy the engine if installed!
Any body have any experience with these heads? I don't see any thing I'd associate with being over heated, heat tabs glued on-the freeze plug at the end of the heads are good. no discoloration of the sealing surface, ie blueish,gold tinting, area around valve springs clean, there was a fair amount of deposits on the exhaust ports and valves.
the heads came in a box labeled Bowden MFG.CORP, 45090 BEIDLER ROAD , Willoughby, OHIO 44094 U.S.A. and they are stamped
on the opposite end from the heat tap BW-3-961613 and DO NOT REMANUFACTURE.

the reason I'm getting the heads ready to go is My 86 WH1 t-type blew a head gasket on cyl 4 and to speed up repair I figured it would help having a set of heads ready to go if no other problems show up during the repair.
I find it hard to believe that the local dealer would have much experience with turbo Buicks let alone oil test heads.

any information about these heads would be appreciated

 

[joed]

There was a member named David chase waay back that found and was selling what you may be referring to as “oil test heads”. I have NEVER heard anything like your dealership contact or anything negative at all. Search turbo buick.com and/or gnttype.org for details. They were calling them “stage jr”. Also I thought Gbody had a similar write up on origin and benefits. I love mine.

 

[farmer Gary]

I got to talking to a guy from Ohio at the BG nationals in 2009 that had some NOS 109 blocks for sale that came from oil test facility, the cylinders bores need to be honed to the standard size. I had gotten his phone number to buy a block from him, but wasn't able get ahold of him. later I noticed Weber Racing had the same blocks for sale with an engine build. Could this of been David Chase?

I really think the story about the heads being trash by the local Dealership is BS, but the machine shop doesn't want to true up the gasket sealing surface on the heads if this is true.

Stage JR kind of rings a bell, the EGR passages are not drilled on the heads. Thank's for the information . attached is a photo of the head cleaned , with the rust removed I can feel the pitting with my finger tips, so the head surface dose need some machine work.

 

[joed]

I got to talking to a guy from Ohio at the BG nationals in 2009 that had some NOS 109 blocks for sale that came from oil test facility, the cylinders bores need to be honed to the standard size. I had gotten his phone number to buy a block from him, but wasn't able get ahold of him. later I noticed Weber Racing had the same blocks for sale with an engine build. Could this of been David Chase?

I really think the story about the heads being trash by the local Dealership is BS, but the machine shop doesn't want to true up the gasket sealing surface on the heads if this is true.

Stage JR kind of rings a bell, the EGR passages are not drilled on the heads. Thank's for the information . attached is a photo of the head cleaned , with the rust removed I can feel the pitting with my finger tips, so the head surface dose need some machine work.

Tom at Champion CNC ported and built mine. No egr ports at all. He loved these heads. He confirmed for me light to very light use. He treated them as new heads.
If you search you should be able to find the real story. I spoke with Dave Chase directly he never mentioned anything about blocks. He bought the heads in a lot directly from GM. Maybe couple hundred sets.

 

[TurboTGuy]

The story on these cars just gets deeper.

Having one is such a cool thing, and then it's the dumbest purchase you ever made, and then it redeems itself again. Rinse, repeat.

I'm hooked.

 

[WarWagon]

I have a set of these stage JR heads, they were good heads and the best ported versions I had.... Until one intake valve popped the head of the valve off and destroyed it. Not the heads fault, they are good iron parts.

 

[WE2Regal]

GM gave the oil test facilities permission to purchase those heads directly from the manufacturer. GM had no use for them because the EGR and heat crossover was deleted. So technically they were never considered GM parts because they never went through their parts inventory system. The "BW" or "BX" designation on the heads was stamped on them because that was how they were identified for use by the test facilities. Most of the oil test engine parts had a special part number beginning with "BX" including the rods and cranks. The same manufacturer also made the later SG1 blocks and sold them to the oil testers. I spoke to an older executive from that company years ago about those parts. He said those heads were also exported for use on large generators. All of them I've seen were in excellent condition but the valves, springs and retainers were junk. I still have a couple sets.

 

[Jason dcpt]

Lubrizol, there world headquarters is still in Willoughby Ohio. They use to do a lot of oil testing using the 3.8 series 1 and 2 engines. Along with many other engines. I was in there diesel department for a short time. What a boring job.

 

[WE2Regal]

I sold a bare set of those recently and took some pictures. They still were still pretty nice after sitting for 20 years. Never cleaned them. Barely any rust. This is how they looked after being used for testing.