Alright, big picture dump! There have been quite a few developments since my last posting. Namely, I realized too late when I went to get an intake manifold gasket, I built a California head! Much bench racing ensued as I tried to figure out if I had screwed myself or not.
The good news is back in the early 90's, the dreaded "Cali" head often wasn't as bad as later that would choke flow. I surmised that the way the port looked, I can't imagine it flowing worse. My theory is the larger flat to the side of the injector divot would effectively make one side of the intake have a pressure drop, which in turn would work one side slow, one side fast, much the same as the staggered intake valve opening design of the Colt Cams regrind. As Geoff stated, if you open both intake valves on the KA at the same time, the flow is crap. But if you stagger the opening, it does a two-step and moves nicely. (General paraphrasing here)
Anyway, Andrew at Gibson Performance had a further idea after flowing the two varieties. He's thinking with the same cam it's effectively just making the engine more efficient, which would have helped emissions though not for the sake of flow. In all actuality, I'm tickled pink. I was severely worried the Cali head would flow worse. However, as you can see from the flow sheets down the page (and don't forget we're only going to mid .450 lift), the Cali head trounced the federal head. What's also interesting is the RB20DET has the exact same intake port shape as the KA.
The only number I don't have is an actual exhaust port original number for the Cali head since I ported that a bit before I sent it to Gibson for the final go through and all new valves, etc. Notice the Int/Exh are switched on the first sheet. Compare against the second sheet though. That's the chopped off head (3 and 1 cylinder) that I cut up to see how much porting I could do before I hit water jacket.
For the federal head, the untouched exhaust valve at .100 lift is only 19 cfm!! It's 48 on the Cali head I prepped! And if you go through the other points, it's just way the heck better everywhere.

Who would've thought? The only downside is I have to use the fatbody side feed injectors which aren't as nice as top feed. Still, they've been working fine as that's the style I have in the current KA24DE that's in the truck. I have a '95 intake manifold that should work fine for the task.
Also of interest is after 95, all the heads are Cali heads. 96-97 are there own separate year, but mainly only due to peripherals related to the intake manifold. Using the 95 intake, all the 93 stuff fits on it, though it has the correct port shape for the Cali head.
While the cut apart head was being flow-benched for research, I also had them powder coat the valve cover wrinkle black. It came out super nice! Anyway, not doing much this weekend but in the next few I'm planning on getting the engine put the rest of the way together. Still need to rework the welds on the head since I haven't done that, but I'm looking forward to finally getting this thing in the truck. It should be a pretty damn nice engine when I'm done!
