Your right Beater. The whole premise of these dyno tests to begin with was to focus on the average street build-up that the average Joe would have done to his engine. And guess what, most of the combos tested were the result of what those average Joe's wanted to see tested, because those components were what they would expect to use for their engine builds. These guys are only going to have simple basic machine work done to their engines, and only be buying the common parts that are available like the Clifford and Offy intakes and so forth. There is no doubt or debate, that with extra money, extra labor and extra effort, the 194 head can possibly show gains beyond that of the open chamber head, but extra money, extra labor and extra effort will be required for the 194 head to do that! But that simple average Joe isn't going to spend that extra to do that...thats the bottom line! So dollar for dollar spent on both heads, the open chamber head is the better choice for that average Joe for that reason. Because until you step up and spend that extra to make the 194 head better, the fact that it does raise compression slightly over the open chamber head, showed it to still have no advantage at that point. 99% of the people that will ever build these engines on this forum are after the "most bang for the buck", because they want just a simple, basic, reliable engine to cruise and drive, with maybe an occassional blast down a country road once in a while.
The comparison you keep using Hank shows you gained at least 2 compression points with your head swap, and you should have noticed an increase of some kind with that much of a gain. But in a normal head swap, you will only gain slightly over 1/2 a compression point as we did, unless you again machine the head additionally to gain more(extra money, extra labor, extra effort). So our comparison between these two heads at the time of the swap was consistent with what one will expect doing a normal basic swap, only the 1/2 of a compression point difference between the chamber sizes, all else being the same ie...valve sizes, both had lumps, same cam, same intake and carb, etc... This showed us that you will have to spend more on the 194 head just to become equal to the open chamber heads capabilities....and these 99% of enthusiasts aren't going to do that.
