Buying Temu Small-Block Chevy Heads Is an Even Worse Idea Than You Thought
The phrase “Made in China” used to be synonymous with cheap garbage, and while that isn’t even mostly the case anymore (just ask the electronics industry) one company continues to uphold the stereotype. Online retailer Temu sells lower-cost, and usually lower-quality, versions of pretty much everything—including General Motors Vortec cylinder heads. But while the price may be tempting, there’s a reason it’s so low.
Eric Weingartner, whose eponymous company Weingartner Racing specializes in cylinder heads, recently took a look at a set of Vortec-style heads purchased off Temu. What he found affirms why the name “Temu” is now interchangeable with “bad.” The set cost just $350 assembled and shipped, which is incredibly cheap. As Weingartner points out in the video, the shipping costs must have been a big part of that total, given how much each head weighs. That makes the true cost of the heads themselves even lower, and it shows.
Eric Weingartner Eric Weingartner via YouTube
At first glance, the intake and exhaust ports look normal. But the combustion chambers are completely wrong. Instead of the round shape used in genuine Vortec heads or high-quality aftermarket versions, they’re distorted into what looks like a badly drawn heart straight off an elementary school Valentine’s Day card. This was probably easier (and thus cheaper) to manufacture, but it’s not going to perform as well.
And while the ports looked okay, only the exhaust side passed a vacuum test. The intake valves also didn’t have back cuts (a lip cut into the valve head) to improve flow, and the seats have lots of sharp angles that further decrease it. Limited retainer-to-seal clearance and weak springs also impact the types of camshafts that can be used with these heads. All of these flaws came together to produce very poor flow-test results, so bad that it probably wouldn’t be worth using these in place of the stock heads on a non-Vortec small block.
The reason why we’re talking so much about flow is because that’s what Vortec is all about. A fixture of GM engines beginning in the mid-1980s, it’s the brand name of a head design meant to encourages a vortex (think mini-tornado) in the combustion chamber to get more complete ignition of the air-fuel mixture. Bolting them onto an older small-block V8 should be an easy way to boost power, if the heads were designed and manufactured correctly.
That obviously wasn’t the case here, but that’s always the risk with knockoff parts. At least being listed on Temu is a warning in and of itself; nobody can argue that these fakes are being passed off as the real thing.
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