I was looking on the NMCA/Pro web site at the rules for street race class thinking of taking my car to the event at 131 dragway (if my junk runs at that time) thinking it might be fun just to try to qualify and found that my combo wound not fit into the allowed heads for the class because in the list of acepted heads for ford small blocks there is no 351c heads. Also port plates on the intake side are not allowed wich I run because of the large  port volume these heads have   I know that in any type of racing you have to build a car to the rule not taylor rules to what people have, but why not allow in a entry level heads up class like street race a cylinder head that has been out of production 33 years and intake port plates that  cost less than    $ 100 dollars and make them on a plane with modern heads that cost much much more.

Canted valve small blocks rule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You have to figure the Chevy bias in there Cleveland heads leave these bow ties in the weeds . Hell they had to go to big blocks to beat Glidden in the 80's NHRA pro-stock. So not to any surprise they have tried to legislate them out.  

Ever wonder why the restricter plate on Nascar fords are smaller than the chevy's? Cleveland heads flow alot more than the sbc do.  

Where in heck did you get that Ford uses smaller restrictor plates than Chevrolet in NASCAR ?

Back when those old time Clevelands ( pre 1992 ) used to run Nascar , the Chevys used to mop the floor with them , ever hear of Cale Yarborough , Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt ?

How come only Glidden won back in them days , couldn't have cheating ?

NHRA stopped small bocks after 81 , Glidden had a fearsome boss 429  

Check it out some time, the diameter of the holes in the fords are smaller than the chevys. Dont like it, deal with it.  

The SBC did do well from 1974-1984 when Ford was completely out of NASCAR (the few remaining teams loyal to Ford had to search for Cleveland parts in Australia toward the end of that span) and Chevy was quietly supplying the front-runners with factory "help." But after Ford SVO got the parts pipeline re-established, Ford started taking a huge chunk out of Chevy's domination.

In fact, the pre-restrictor plate NASCAR speed records at Talladega and Daytona are still held by Cleveland-style Fords.  Bill Elliott alone won 11 superspeedway races in 1985 with Cleveland-style Ford power (albeit heavily modified by his brother Ernie).  And actually, before he teamed up with Richard Childress (and before Ford SVO's NASCAR program was fully funded), Dale Earnhardt won a handful of races in Bud Moore's Thunderbird! 

NASCAR has at times juggled plate sizes. But now GM, Dodge and Ford all run similar splayed-valve cylinder heads (GM uses the non-production "SB-2" head for parity with the Roush-Yates-style "Cleveland"), so the plates are the same.

Nobody's run a traditional 23-degree inline valve SBC head in Nextel Cup competition in years.  It's simply an obsolete design.

yup ..there is not much 'stock' about a Nascar motor:

billet cam cores and chilled iron flat tappet an a 55mm blank .420-.440 lobe lift

7-4 and 2-3 firing order mods..

2.3 inch mains and 1.88/1.84 rod bearing sizes to keep bearing speeds down..

2:1 rocker ratios

sb2.2 heads flowing 300+cfm at .500 lift and upwards of 410+cfm at .800

trick ring packages,gasports and extensive use of coatings...

quoted ted :And actually, before he teamed up with Richard Childress (and before Ford SVO's NASCAR program was fully funded), Dale Earnhardt won a handful of races in Bud Moore's Thunderbird! 

Returning to a Chevrolet where he became a god .Despite the full funding of the now renamed SVO . Ford , with favorable rule changes from the powers that be in Daytona Beach , has been able to win . That new Fusion looks racy , does not resemble anything they sell , should be fast .

The real battle in the future will be with Toyota .

Hmmmm Chevy mopped the Floor with them ? I seem to recall that A Ford won a Driver Points Championship with Bill Elliot in 88 and the only reason Ford did not win a manufacturers cup before 92 was due to the fact it took a few years to get enough teams to commit and believe that Ford really was back in the game after they pulled the rug out from under them in 73. You mentioned Cale Yarborough . Tell me , what kind of car was Cale driving in 85 when he finished  second to Elliot ? And as for the sb2 , best looking Ford that did not come out of Dearborn. Looks like Chevy just copied the Ford design when theirs could not stand on its own anymore.   

On a side note, anyone check out the new Edelbrock Cleveland heads? Look pretty sweet to me.  

Yeah, what's the deal with the comments about the Cleveland engines written underneath the heads? I thought those Cleveland heads were pretty darn good for a stock 25-30 year old casting. I've even read that the 4-bbl heads were just too big for street use. Hot Rod did a build-up of a 400M back in '98 that made 456 lb-ft and 382 hp with all emissions stuff hooked up for under $2500 (which probably meant about $3000+, but could likely have been done for less). Since 351/400M are very uncommon I'd like to see build-ups of it (and maybe a FE motor) with the 2-bbl, 4-bbl, and the Edelbrock heads run on the motor.

Me too, maybe it'll happen, maybe not.