63 Super Duty Heads 9771980 Crane prepared and stamped
 

I have a pair of 63 9771980 SD heads that were prepared and stamped with a # from Crane Cams. Does anyone have any info or ever heard of them? Any help would be helpful. Also Have a M. Thompson Duel Quad Manifold 54299 Alum. 63 Vintage

Paul

What do you want to know?Never knew of Crane doing head work.Tom

Hi Tom,

Well, A couple things, If you ever heard of it, You answered that, So I guess other questions will be tough to answer, Who would you recommend to talk to on these? The stamp on the end of both heads does not appear to be a "Machine Shop" stamp. Maybe they were going to do a whole Cam to Head package or they did for a short period of time? It also had there Cam retainers, push rods and H294 Fireball Cam..... Thanks for any help you can give me.

Paul

I know a lot about 980 heads as I run a set but no clue on the ones you own.Tom

crane was huge in the head work dept..huge..

the SS AMXs and Javelins, and the SCramblers had crane prepped heads..very common to find crane prepped heads for AMC products

ive run across a ton of SBC stuff from them, never heard of a set of SDs from them..and i'm sure it happened a lot

In the run up to the SD head, Pontiac sent out RA4s to a number of porting 'wizards' to see what the aftermarket would do with them. A few, including the famous Joe Mondello managed to kill some airflow. Crane, IIRC, make them pretty but didn't do a lot for the numbers. Warren Brownfield for AFR did what appeared to be very little, but spiked the numbers.

Moral of story - for a NA engine, the factory guys knew what they were doing. Would love to see and A-to-B comparo with your Crane heads and a box stock 980, same bench, same air, same flare, same operator.

That 54299 may have been cast in '63 but it would not be "correct" for those heads. You would want a 9770859 instead. Or a bathtub depending upon what you are going to put them in. Thompson 54299 would be correct for '61/'62 sd cars and even then PMD 542991 better yet. You may already know this.

SD 980 heads info
 

Thank you all for your reply's, On the intake, I got it with the heads, I know it did not come on the SD that year, I found some info on the manifold that said when Pontiac stop making it, M Thompson did some from 63 to 65 ??? And it would be cool to see how different they are from stock, The person I got them from had the heads on a 389 with a single 4BBL and said the 64 GTO with 3:55 ripped, Very fast and pulled well to 5500RPM. Said before he owned it it had the M. Thompson Intake on it?? Never ran it himself. Was also told Crane did some BBC heads. Seems like he did a variety of manufactures stuff . Was he affiliated with Crane Cams? Had a large Fireball Crane Cam and Valve train parts??

Back in the day I had a pair of 614 heads that had Crane stampings on them with a serial number. Called them up with the information to determine what was done. I was told they lost records in a fire and could not tell me much.

SD Heads
 

Ya, Same, Called a couple weeks ago Thanks!!

Ricky Rapp, Heads by Rick, ran the Crane head dept when they were in Hallandale. Bud Gandy, who I went to High school with was a porter. He was also Rickys Brother in law. Harvey Crane was a customer of mine with his 69 Porsche Sportomatic. The shop was across I95 from me. Bud used to do heads for Bobby Allison and Mario Andretti. Greg Kramer, pretty well known for 7 Liter Hydroplane engines was there also. When Crane moved to Daytona Harvey came to my shop and wanted Porsche heads, and cam housings and assorted parts so he could build Porsche cams as he had a contract with Garretson in Calif. to make their cams. Rick, Greg, Jim Weir and Bud didn't want to move. Bud lived at a nudist camp near me with his girlfriend. Rick, Greg and Jim Weir started Race Cams here in Ft Lauderdale. They built some really good cams and did well for a while. Greg and Bud both had health problems and passed away and Rick started Heads by Rick. Bud did all my Porsche head porting for years and Greg did cams for me. They are all sorely missed.
Harvey did well with the Garretson cam grinds, and we sold quite a few.
That's the rest of the story.

PM sent.Tom

From the 1966 Crane Catalog. The Catalog not only lists the assorted cams, it also lists the head work, and engine balancing services.

The work is not specific to the SD head as Crane provided the services to work all heads if you wanted them worked by Crane.

they called their heads Super Port Flow. They had a head shop with 3 or 4 guys doing the work all day. My machinest worked there. I don't think they did heads after the move to Daytona. The head porters didn't want to move to Daytona.
They also sold turbos, used to have a catalog but lost it in a flood. A lot of people used their heads, they were things of beauty.. There were 2 drag racers, well known, who worked there. Dave Smith and Harvey Collins. .

980 Heads
 

Thanks Lilabner,

Very Cool info on them, My Machine shop does his share of porting and praised the Port job on these heads, Great story on the Head Dept at Crane in CA, Then FL. Guys really knew there stuff, You are still into this stuff, Really never leaves ya.... One other question, Crane also did all makes and model cams in CA?, Then moved to FL and just did cams and Valve Train Parts at that point??

Thank You Lilabner and Also Thanks to Pontiac Jim 59 for the catalog info