44 Jp jpmagazine.com OCTOBER 2019
DON’T DITCH THAT AMC V-8
hasn’t changed much since 1966 and is
still a good seller. Over the years, Smokey
Yunick, Bill Stroppe, Holman & Moody,
Carroll Shelby, Dan Gurney, and Bud
Moore all came to Ofria for his expertise.
AMC did, too.
Today, Ofria is one of the last of the
original, old-school builders. Most of
t he mach i nes i n h is shop were made long
before computers were ever controlling
them, and yet they’re incredibly precise.
He’s still in the shop almost every day
( he goes raci ng on weekends somet i mes),
and at 83 years old he’s been modifying
and rebuilding engines for seven decades.
Opening the doors of Valley Head Service
on May 1, 1965, Ofria quickly made a
name for himself as a premier head f low
guy. In 1968, he got a call from AMC,
and in 1970, the dogleg head would
become the only head available for the
new larger-displacement (with a taller
deck height) AMC V-8.
Larry tells us, “The AMC was the
ugliest motor at the track, but don’t
ever mess with it, because if it was built
right it’d eat you alive! And it was a good
competitor. What killed AMCs in racing
was having a two-bolt main instead of
a four-bolt. The AMCs would lead the
first half of the race, and either burn up
the rear or drop the crank out during the
second half.”
Larry continues, “I got the call
from AMC in ’68 because of all the
work I was doing for Holman & Moody,
Shelby, Stroppe, Bud Moore, and Dan
Gurney. Back then, we were doing just
about everyone’s head work except for
Penske and the Chrysler Black Shadow
Group guys. In 1968, a gentleman by the
name of Ronnie Kaplan, outta Chicago,
contacted me, and after we hung up, they
started to make the arrangements. Their
head f low guy had retired and moved to
Mexico, so they found him, pulled him
out of retirement, and sent him to spend
three weeks with me on the flow bench.
Back then, there were only about five real
good f low benches across the country. We
started testing and we simply found out
where the air wanted to be—so we moved
the port offset. The old AMC heads
would just f low air straight in, not swirl it,
and it would bounce back out. We moved
the port to make a more drastic turn to
swirl the air.”
The dogleg port would be AMC’s
edge they were looking for in racing, and
it brought even more notoriety to Ofria’s
genius. He continued to be a head special-
ist until around 1974, when he expanded
and started building complete engines.
Today, Ofria continues to man the helm
at Valley Head Service in Northridge,
California, still pumping out some of
the best custom-built engines in the
automotive world.If you’re building an AMC engine and you
want a shop with decades of experience, you
won’t find many with more history than Valley
Head Service.The 401 made it into the fullsize Jeeps
last in 1978, but the 360ci variant was
used until 1991—and is one of the last
carbureted engines in the U.S.If your AMC block suddenly achieves some
“speed” holes like this, you’ll likely be
shopping for a whole new engine, but we
implore you to look for an AMC replacement
instead of a cheap-and-easy, go-to swap.Isn’t this freshly built AMC 401 sitting at Valley
Head Ser vice just so much sexier than some
powdered-metal LS?