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One my my cylinder heads is VW, and the other is made by "Eepco....

No never heard of that company, I got a forged 74mm Crankshaft with the Name IMPAVI on the side of it?? I works! :lol:

Yes, supposedly they are the worst VW head casting ever sold. Very soft, porous metal.

Yes they were a little soft and had porosity issues. They were made from about 1984-88 I believe. Tim

I had a set of those. Not very good. One rebuilder wouldn''t even take that brand for cores. However, if it is working for you, who's to argue?

Best,
JJS

I bought 2 heads off ebay, one was eepco. sold them, asap

The first EEPCO heads were superior in many ways to anything before or since from VW or anyone else. I still have a couple pair and I wouldn't trade them for any other stock-valve heads. Soft? Just try porting some, you'll find out otherwise real quick - they melted down 3 stock head cores for every 2 EEPCOs produced - the metal is far denser than stock heads.
Quality control suffered as production increased and the later heads often had some serious porosity problems (if you flycut them to raise compression or enlarge the bore there was a good chance you'd hit an air pocket). The ports are substantially smaller than any stock head, including a 311, so unless you use them in pairs you're in for extra work to match them up. They have much more metal in the roof of the intake ports so they can be ported larger than early stockers without hitting daylight, but the gasket surface isn't any larger so they still need welding up for ports anywhere near as large as today's 044s will accommodate. Many preferred them (as-cast) for a stock engine - the infamous dualport "flatspot" was reduced by the smaller ports.

Not only were they a better quality material, but Eepco made the first dual-plug heads for Type I, specifically for aircraft. All ports had lumps of extra material, which made porting mandatory.

Cool, thanks guys...especially Marc. I wonder if my motor was rebuilt back in the eighties...

I used to race with an Eepco salesman. They made the heads in the late 70s into the 80s. 79-85 or something like that. I think they went out of business in about 85 or 86. They would take any core because the ones that couldn't be rebuilt they'ed melt down and cast new ones from them.

Bugzlife wrote:No never heard of that company, I got a forged 74mm Crankshaft with the Name IMPAVI on the side of it?? I works!

U have entered the cast crank zone....




I also have a pair of Eepcos.......Thier beautiful.......

I sold EEPCO heads when they first hit the market in the 80s. I`ve never heard anything good about them till now. Obviously some were hardened and some were not because after a couple months of selling these heads to unsuspecting customers and hearing back from the heads shops, the guides would fall out of them ,they were porous,and no one had anything good to say. These heads dissapeared as fast as the appeared and no one seemed to care. Its too bad tho because the design of the heads was great and they had extra material over the intake ports the same as a modern 044 head but predating them by almost 20 years. If you are rebuiling your motor to last a long time then I would install 2 new heads anyway.

Hmm --

The two pairs that I reworked were obviously a denser, harder material than the standard German heads of the day. They weren't what I would call "porous" although a few random, small air bubbles were obvious. Fortunately, none of these bubbles were exposed in any critical areas after my machining (and apparently, none hiding just beneath the surface.)

If it's true that Eepcos were cast from melted-down heads, I'm amazed with the results. I would have expected some nasty pockets of crud, rather than just a few random, small bubbles. Perhaps they threw out some nasty ones.

Anyhow, I changed out the valve guides and exhaust studs for virilium guides & stainless studs, and then proceeded to put just shy of 100,000 hard street miles on my Ghia. When I sold the Ghia, I kept the engine. It still sits, awaiting an inspection, a rebuild, and another Ghia.

So I'm being offered a pair of ported EEPCO heads, is there any feature that would let me identify the early "probably-good-quality" against the later "pot-metal-avoid-at-all-costs" heads?

PS: yes I know, this is a 16 year old thread

I have only seen 2 sets of EEPCO heads, both of them were on motors that ran very bad. The heads had huge cracks and the valve guides were terrible. Personally I would steer clear, I stopped using used heads several years ago. New heads are not that expensive.
Good Luck
Kenric