SRS 185 kit ....... Any good?

[B-Race Tuning]

When these were first punted out they were a very viable, cheap performance option. obviously you took the good with the bad, but the cost was worth the punt. having now looked at the cost of a kit, it's an expensive gamble whether you can port to something sensible. I now don't consider them to be a 'safe' purchase, whereas before the cost made it worth the gamble. They used to be able to be made into a lovely 'small-block' TS1.

[scooterslag]

I've bought two in my time, the first one was just a barrel off a ebay seller, I was intending to use a piston of my choice and a 175 head which I already had. However when it arrived - what a piece of s**t, the transfers had huge blobs of ally in them where the steel liner was connected to the ally barrel jacket and the port size was IMO too big and would had swallowed a ring so I flogged it off at a loss and went looking for a genuine SR barrel rather than the ebay copy. I sourced one off a LCGB member which has been tuned by Harry Barlow and taken out to 190, the work was excellent and the quality a lot better than the copy but trying to find a suitable decent 190 piston which wouldn't cost the earth was tricky and tales of the steel liner wearing prematurely put me off the whole ally/steel lined barrel idea. Now planning to tune a good old fashioned iron barrel which is what I should of bothered with in the first place