We were hanging out at Edelbrock several weeks ago in the dyno room with our pals Curt Hooker and engine builder Robert Jung. Robert was working on a classic 409 big-block Chevy slated for future dyno testing, and we grabbed a couple of photos. If you've never seen the deck configuration on a 409, it's weird. The combustion chamber is actually built into the block deck surface, creating volume on the exhaust side of the cylinder instead of in the cylinder head. In this case, the best way to increase compression is by adding dome volume to the pistons. Edelbrock now has affordable aluminum heads for these engines, which should fuel a resurgence of interest in these W-engines. A pair of aluminum 348/409 heads will run around $2,100.00, priced from Summit Racing.