[Aaron Quinton]

Curt you're right. It was a huge miss based on the market. The guys willing to carve out their own ports for a Pontiac are less than 10 units I'd guess. Marcella did a great job on his. If someone would have offered a good CNC program that offered a cost effective head then it could have worked. I think Edelbrock completely missed the market here.

[mgarblik]

I too was a bit puzzled with the pro-port offerings. It was just too raw for anyone other than a shop with 5-axis capability and a really good cylinder head guy to work with it. As is often the case in our tiny hobby, we are talking about 8-12 people in the country who have the knowledge, capability and interest in a project like that. So there they sat on the shelf for years, unsold. Edelbrock has wonderful casting capability, in house HIP processing and talented engineers like Rick Roberts who does genuinely like Pontiac engines. But as others have said, they missed the market in numerous ways. The heads were 6-10 years too late. The heads were too rough as sold. Other smaller producers stepped-up like All Pontiac and KRE, DCI and others to fill the void. The cost of designing and building your own billet heads is not as totally out of reach as it was 10 years ago when few 5 axis machines were out there. Kinda like "new Coke", it really missed the mark.

[Aaron Quinton]

Dude, your experience and feedback on this board means a lot. I appreciate you sharing your experience so we all can get better. Thanks.

Originally Posted by mgarblik

I too was a bit puzzled with the pro-port offerings. It was just too raw for anyone other than a shop with 5-axis capability and a really good cylinder head guy to work with it. As is often the case in our tiny hobby, we are talking about 8-12 people in the country who have the knowledge, capability and interest in a project like that. So there they sat on the shelf for years, unsold. Edelbrock has wonderful casting capability, in house HIP processing and talented engineers like Rick Roberts who does genuinely like Pontiac engines. But as others have said, they missed the market in numerous ways. The heads were 6-10 years too late. The heads were too rough as sold. Other smaller producers stepped-up like All Pontiac and KRE, DCI and others to fill the void. The cost of designing and building your own billet heads is not as totally out of reach as it was 10 years ago when few 5 axis machines were out there. Kinda like "new Coke", it really missed the mark.

[mgarblik]

Appreciate the kind words but I should say my post was just my opinion. Not based on experience with these heads. I looked them over carefully at PRI several times. I talked to Rick Roberts over a couple of years about what he expected the heads to do for the Pontiac world. He said he fully expected several Pontiac specialty shops with 5-axis capability to produce a variety of race ports for various applications. Then a customer would buy the heads and go to their favorite Pontiac builder that had the software for the port they wanted, and they would build a set of heads for them, kind of like the Chevy world. It just didn't happen for a variety of reasons, market saturation being a major reason. Again, just my opinion. Wonder how many sets they actually poured? Or sold?