SEMA 2017: Air Flow Research’s CNC’d LS1 And LS3 Heads

Valencia, California-based Air Flow Research has been gaining an ever-stronger foothold in the high performance engine marketplace in recent years, expanding their offerings and positioning themselves in a host of different road-going and racing markets, and their LS1 cylinder heads are a perfect illustration of that, delivering a cylinder head for swap applications that can be utilized in a host of applications.

These heads that AFR has on display at the SEMA Show this year are fully CNC-ported, which AFR’s Steve Arent says are perfect for LS1 conversion projects, commenting that such power plants “are found in many of the offload trucks nowadays.” Arent added, “we even CNC our valve jobs — we try to take the humans out of it and let the machines do it. We program everything and that way everything is consistent. You get consistent chambers, consistent runners, the valve jobs have the right concentricity to them that you’re looking for.”

They’re just a really badass cylinder head. – Steve Arent

The heads sport a 15-degree valve angle and come with a 2.02- or 2.05-inch intake valve option and a 1.66-inch exhaust valve. AFR options them to the customer fully assembled with stainless valves, pack springs, titanium retainers (as an option) or a regular steel retainer.

“They’re just a really badass cylinder head,” Arent says proudly.

Alongside AFR’s LS1 offering is a head for the LS3 application, as well: revealed in May of this year, these heads are a 12-degree piece with an LS7 valve angle and LS3 intake and exhaust  flange. These head sport a 2.100-inch intake valve and a 1.600-inch exhaust.

Arent comments, “the cool thing with these head are they’re a 260cc runner, which is a smaller runner, so the guys that are doing an offroad truck hill climb application, you can get a little more torque out of the engine. But the flow out of these things is phenomenal — they flow about 388 cfm at .700 lift. It’s a smaller runner than the LS7, and it outflows the LS7.”

Like the former, the LS3 variants are fully CNC-machined and optioned as fully assembled or bare. These are also available in a 4-bolt or 6-bolt flange to fit LSX blocks.

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About the author

Andrew Wolf

Andrew has been involved in motorsports from a very young age. Over the years, he has photographed several major auto racing events, sports, news journalism, portraiture, and everything in between. After working with the Power Automedia staff for some time on a freelance basis, Andrew joined the team in 2010.
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