Just joined today to get some help on my '84 E-350 motorhome. The 460 in it had been converted to run on propane before I bought it and there's no going back. The gas tanks, fuel lines, pump and carb are all long gone. After 70,000 miles the exhaust seats have "disappeared" so I'm doing a head rebuild (and maybe cam changeout as well).
Propane has an octane rating of 104 so it would be worth it to go with different heads than the original D3VE's so the C/R would be higher. Can someone tell me what castings I should look for? What is the combustion chamber volume of the DOVE's (D3VE's are about 98cc).
Thanks in advance for any info.

 

the dove head's are 75 cc

 

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....so wouldn't a larger combustion chamber give you more power? i don't know much about heads...but i always thought bigger was better, lol
matt

 

on a 460 the lower the cc the more power it make's

 

well if you lower the CC's of any engine's head, you raise the compression and get a bigger pop. making more power, but that also will make you have to run a higher octane level.... but 104 should be plenty... my 289 is running about a 10.5-11:1 compression and it runs high rpms with just 91 octane, just my 2 cents.....

 

what about a lower cc and then make the valves a little bigger...could you still run on a lower octane?

 

Combustion chamber size and valve size are different issues.