“The Oldsmobile V-8 engine is not dead,” says engine builder Brad Wise of Wise Performance Engineering. And if the photos he’s sent us of the brand-new Oldsmobile aluminum cylinder head design his company has been working on are any indication, the opposite is exactly the case.

Back in the mid to late-’00s, Wise was racing his Olds in the NMCA’s Pro Stock class using a set of warmed over old-school Batten cylinder heads, and he eventually came to the realization that if he wanted his combination to progress, he was going to have to do something about the induction system, as the Batten heads were, for lack of a better term, tapped out.

Now, Wise Performance Engineering has developed the Oldsmobile “Z” cylinder head, based on hundreds of hours of research and development time. Using the experience he gained while racing in the NMCA and supporting his customers all over the world, Wise made the decision to investigate a new design that would provide some room for growth – and the Z heads are the result.

“We designed this stuff a few years ago, and just recently put them into production and have had some great results out of them. They are a clean sheet of paper design. For the racing we’ve done, there is no cylinder head out there that was worth anything,” he explains.

The impetus for the design came from, of all places, a look at the Chevrolet SB2-style cylinder head and its excellent-flowing, modern combustion chamber and port design. Molding two designs into one proved more challenging than expected, but hard work and solid engineering principles made the Z head a reality.

“I had those sitting here, and took a look at the chamber design and the shape. We then basically put those dimensions into our cylinder head, and then worked around the port and chamber dimensions to make everything fit within in Oldsmobile platform,” he says.

Heads are available with bronze guides and iron seats, with a beryllium-copper seat available for max-effort applications.

As with any major engineering project, it wasn’t so simple as just measuring the dimensions and transferring them over to a new casting. After lots of trial and error, plenty of burned welding wire, measuring, testing, fitting, and hair-pulling, he finally settled on dimensions that made sense for the Olds platform, and would provide an opportunity for both street and race customers to step into the 21st century in terms of performance and airflow capability.

Design Specifics

The factory Olds cylinder head uses a 6-degree valve angle in an inline arrangement, and his decision to keep the new design to where it would work for both street and race-type applications presented plenty of challenges.

“We wanted to keep the design as close to OEM specs as possible so that guys could bolt these on using existing components, but have a chamber design that’s modern. Having a decent port in the thing to where it would flow and work forced us to raise the intake port up 1.750-inch, and then we raised the exhaust port about the same. You have a direct, line of sight to the valve on both the intake and exhaust side. By raising everything up, we now have a cylinder head that flows just as good as the SB2 or R07 or anything else out there,” explains Wise.

Although the ports have been raised, Wise says that the current Edelbrock intake for the 455 Oldsmobile engine bolts right on to the new cylinder head design. For those looking to build an Olds small-block, Wise recommends using one of the mid-80s Olds diesel engine blocks, adding these cylinder heads, then utilizing the Edelbrock 455 manifold on top to work with the raised port location. There is a spacer system to make everything work with a big-block Olds.

The heads are offered in four different configurations, from a basic CNC-chamber, CNC intake/exhaust port design that flows 340 cfm on the company’s Superflow SF600 flowbench all the way up to the big-dog 400-plus cfm max-effort cylinder head designed for all-out racing applications. The Stage 1 head is fully CNC-machined and is delivered with 5/16-inch bronze valve guides and iron seats. Much like a Pontiac engine, WPE makes use of a valley tray with their design that is installed in the lifter valley to allow for intake installation and removal without affecting the cooling system. Valve covers, fuel-injection-capable 4bbl-style intake manifolds, and other parts to install the cylinder heads are also available.

The super-thick deck is not an illusion – Wise says these are 1.125-inch thick. The Edelbrock 455 Olds manifold bolts right on.

Optional Equipment

The T&D shaft-rocker system was developed specifically for this cylinder head configuration.

Options include stainless or titanium valves, beryllium valve seats, and a T&D 1.7:1 or 1.8:1 shaft rocker system that’s been developed specifically for this application. Wise offers his expertise in setting up the cylinder heads per customer input and through the application of his 30-plus years of experience with the Oldsmobile platform.

“We had T&D design the rocker system for these. I sent the head out to them and had them build their complete shaft-style rocker system on it. We designed the cylinder head on paper for a max-effort race application, but what we’ve done is detuned it so that it works well for the street guy. The head has 1.125-inch decks, so we’re able to handle 2,000 horsepower blown and turbocharged combinations without any issues of the deck moving around. There’s enough material in and around the deck to handle that kind of power,” he explains.

With 70cc chambers built into the heads from the beginning, the heads handle street performance, but Wise explains that users looking to use them in more aggressive combinations can knock down the chamber dimension by decking the cylinder head and build some compression into the engine.

As the Oldmobile engine was offered in both small-block (9.330-inch deck height) and big-block (10.625-inch deck height) with no other changes to the basic architecture, the cylinder heads works on either combination without any issues. The big-block and diesel engine blocks also used a 3.000-inch main bearing diameter over the small-block’s main bearing dimension of 2.500-inch.

Pricing on the WPE Z head starts at $2,850 per pair for the Stage 1 design, with incremental prices increases as the user seeks to increase performance by choosing the Stage 2, 3 or 4 designs. Rocker arms and other supplemental parts increase the price as well.

Also available from WPE are exhaust flanges, valley trays, and every other part you’ll need for installation.

“The stock cylinder head and other designs on the market are capable of flowing about 320 cfm, but above that, and above .650-inch lift, they become inefficient and the airflow becomes very turbulent because of the chamber design. With the racing we do, we spin the engine up to 9.500 rpm or more, and we needed a cylinder head that would handle the piston speed. These heads solve all of those problems,” Wise explains.