DD,

I would add the following requirements to your list for any mod.

You want to be able to cruise at your preferred highway speed and be on the cam in sixth.

You want to be able to overtake from just below the highway speed limit without having to tap dance on the gearlever.

My bike loaded for touring with just me is ~500kg. Yours with a pillion will be even more possibly closer to 600kg.

Forget the MVA heads unless you order it with 120 or so cubes

cheers
Surly

What made you decide on the 54H for the dresser?
Do you have a target in mind?

My thinking was along these lines......
It is a "heavy" bike.(given hd classifications)
You probably would (may well) spend most of the time in the up to 4500 rpm area.
The 255 cams do cop a lot of bashing, but if you use a -4 gear, it helps a lot.
I have done many engines over time. Recently, a good friend of mine had a little misfortune (engine wise), so I made it a 103(it was an 88) with 255 cams (cast flat tops, 50 mm SE, 1.9 in, 1.63 ex)
I did grind on the heads, and I have done a fair bit of that as well. But the point is, he has 118 ft lbs of torque, at around early 4's. It passes 100 at 2000 rpm or so.
It starts well(though it cranks 200), due to the -4 gear, and that helps it not run out of puff embarrassingly low.
It really does have power right where it is needed.
And it goes to over 5 before it really drops off. If new HD performed like it does, they would sell double.
To be fair, as time has gone by, I have become more and more of a gen HD parts fan. The quality seems good, and they fit well.
Mind you, I have 54H cams in the shed, ready for my dyna. So there you go. Much lighter bike though, and a solo as well.
I would previously have thought 255 would not be all that impressive, but they really can be.
I am thinking compression releases are a good idea, though, as I mentioned, his bike actually starts quite ok.
They are not a noisy cam at all, and there is good seat pressure there as well.
Just a little recent experience that I thought you may find interesting.

Fitted those heads to my 2008 fatboy. I bored it out to 103 and fitted se forged 10.5 ;1 pistons then shaved 35 '' off the barrels to tighten up squish.  Topped the build off with se 260 cams. I found the bike didn't loose any bottom end torque was very smooth down low but once you got to 4500 rpm it just pulled your arms out of your sockets right through to the rev limiter which was set to 7000 rpm. Camshaft operation was relatively  quite but I did have some issues with pinking at 4 to 5000 rpm which caused me to dial out some ignition at this rpm with my thundermax all was then good. To bad bike got written off !! I was lucky got to pull all my engine stuff off and will repeat the build on my new bike with a little less compression this time I think  As for the CNC ported heads they worked well.for me depends what you want if your chasing low down torque just use the stock heads I flowed mine before buying the CNC ported heads the port shape and size wasn't the restriction the valve size was. Hope this helps.

Regards Fullthrottle.

I guess if you were make major changes to your engine, and the best thing you could say regarding bottom end power
is that you didn't lose any(assumably over stock, also meaning you did not gain any) then it would not be the best street build(most likely),
as I think it would be fair to say that everyone that rides on the street uses idle to 4500(or less) every time they ride, but whether or not they go higher
is another matter.
Given the original post, this seems to be a confirmation that those heads would have been a disaster for him.

I agree with what your saying about bigger valves Ozrodder as for the Rev limiter that is were it is set and it did pull hard to it but only hit it a couple of times in the early days when I was setting the engine tune up, Wouldn,t expect it to last to long if it was happening all the time.

Dynarider. I also agree with what you say as the engine was built to run hard at top end. I had somebody advise me that the heads and cams worked well together as they had used them before. The bigger bore size and tighter squish help with bottom end torque. I was surprised at how well the bike ran and pulled at low rpm cocsidering the size of the cams.It also confirms what you say the heads are not suited if you are trying to gain lots of bottom end grunt.

hey dodgy the local mech down here reckons the mcr bath tub heads are better for 103s ,smaller intake valve and plenty of meat if some grinding is recquired .its about velocity