Are they interchanegable? I found some used heads with some work done for reasonable money. If they will work, what should I look out for with used heads?

 

Yes they will, I put 69 or 70 D0Oe heads on mine that has a smaller combustion chamber. They dont have hardened valve seats so you might have problems with intake valves, wich I havent yet.(I try to remember to put "lead" additive in my gas) I asked my machinist about doing them and he said he wouldnt bother..all the hot rodders run the old heads without putting seats in them and dont have any problems. Granted, I dont put that many miles on my truck, if yours sees a lot of mileage I'd check into it a little more. The heads you areooking at may have had them done already, you can see the seats with the valves in. Do you have the casting #'s on these used heads and do you know what was done to them?

 

I think they're D00B. They've had extensive port and polish work by previous owner, screw in studs, guide plates, 58 cc, larger springs up to 600lift.


What do you think? I know very little about heads.

 

As far as Ford heads go, they are some of the better ones, if Ford ever made a "good" head. You may have to run better gas in though, or if you are building a engine, buy a piston with a little bit of a dish to it. The smaller chambers will raise the compression ratio, which is good for power, but the octane of the fuel may have to be raised to keep it from pinging.

 

If you can get E-85 you might be alright with the compression.
Bashby- It's the exhaust valve seats.

 

I always thought it was the intakes, but I could be wrong (again) Thanks for the correction. I did a google search on the subject and most people are saying unless you are racing or towing a lot you shouldnt have any problems. Since my truck weighs 8000 lbs empty I think I'll keep running tha additive even though a big part of my brain says NO to all "snake oils" I buy some stuff from wal mart that treats like 200 gal and is pretty cheap

 

I'm planning on putting 1.90/1.60 valves in some heads I'm porting and I bought some hardened exhaust seats. I talked to 2 reputable machine shops and one said since the heads had hardened seats from the factory I didn't need the seats. The other one said that they are surface hardened and cutting them larger for the 1.60's will expose unhardened metal, so I would need to have the seats installed. I don't know which one of them is right, but I can assure you it's the exhaust seats.
You will also see heads advertised with hardened exhaust seats. If you can get that additive pretty cheap then I'd keep using it. Hotrodders have to replace everything all the time anyway.

 

I say BS on surface hardening. When the seats are first installed they have to be ground to fit the valve so that would kill that theory. Heres some sorta interesting reading I found on the leaded fuel. It says that "unleaded" fuel had some lead until 1995 Leaded Gas Phaseout

 

Then I guess I'll go with the guy that said I needed them. He's smarter than the other guy cause he makes more money by doing stuff that doesn't have to be done.
You're right, they don't replace them when they do a valve job either, do they. Yeah, this guy just wanted me to drop my heads off and give him Carte Blanche. He said it'll be somewhere between $500 and $800 depending what you need. UH HUH- Yeah, I'm going to spend $800 on a set of stock heads.

 

Thats about what I came up with when I did mine, I ported the exhaust pports and had to put 1-2 valves in them, but for the $ to put seats in an old set of heads I figured they'll probably last quite some time with the limited (although hard ones) miles I put on it theyve lasted one season of plowing snow (though we didnt get much) and a few loads of gravel and what-not

 

Well I don't plan on it. I know it's going to run me some cash to get them done, but if it goes over $400 I'll just get some used aluminums and have some nice ported trotline anchors.
I think I've found a machine shop that will work with me on them. I talked to them about cutting the seats and they were reasonable enough. I had them do a 2002 Escort head and it came out good.

 

I don't know if you are going to get away with modifying the stock heads cheaper than buying a set of aftermarket heads. I believe you can still get cast iron fairly cheap correct?

Anyway, you have to buy the valves and pay the labor. Then you find out to realize the benefit of the larger valves, you need a aftermarket cam, so with all this valve work and the new cam, you are going to need a adjustable valve train. What does this mean? It means paying more money to machine the heads to accept screw in studs and guide plates. What do guide plates mean? New hardened push rods. And along with the larger valves and and higher lift cam you need different valve springs. You also may need larger diameter ones. So this means more machine work. And of course all this requires grinding as much as you can to enlarge the ports, and after that they still don't flow that great.

An aftermarket is head is hard to beat in the end if you add it all up. They are already cast with larger ports, already come with larger valves with hardened seats, already come with screw in studs and guide plates and have or are ready to accept larger springs to handle the larger valves, higher lift, and higher rpms that will come out of all this hot rodding.

 

I think I ended up putting a total of 300$ in my heads,I had to knurl the valve guides and spend a lot of time grinding away the emission hump but I figured that wasnt too bad for a little more compression.(IIRC it is about 9 or 9.5:1) I can run 87 octane without pinging, I guess I should advance the timing a little and run 93...

 

I know. I already have the valves, seals, seats, springs, rockers, shims and keepers. I just need some retainers. I am almost finished porting them.
They say the key to a good build is matching all the parts. Well this ought to be a great build because all the parts match.... they are all the cheapest crappiest parts you can get!
I already have the cam, the crank, the rods, the bearings, the rings, the water pump, the intake, the carb, (well maybe not the carb, I have a rebuildable Eddy 750, but I may get new), 2 harmonic balancers, one fluid filled, one ford motorsports, SFI flexplate, and lifters.
This the build that money couldn't buy- cause if I had any money I wouldn't build it.
Swapping over to aftermarket heads would probably cost me more than the machine work as it would mean changing parts. I have resigned myself to the fact this won't be a very high performance motor. I have decided to build a sleeper instead. This means I won't use the 7quart Canton pan or long tube headers I have. I'm porting the factory manifolds.
This is a cheepo 399 stroker. With 70cc heads I'm flirting with disaster on the CR. Any aftermarket heads would mean a piston change. That's why I decided to port some smog heads. It will be interesting how this turns out.
I have some nice parts that I gathered over the years and I may get some pistons and go another way, but this is the plan for now.

 

....I use a set of DOOE heads on my 302 HO , they came off a 69 351 mach 1 . They have the 190-160 valves with screw in studs & have been ported .They are non emission heads . You will need guideplates & hardened push rods . They work very well . You may need to use higher octane fuel.My truck is tuned for 93 octane... Lew