I have to replace a head gasket on my FE 360 and a buddy of mine brought up the conversation on different heads. People have mentioned things such as "aluminum heads" or putting 427 heads on a 390, etc. I am just curious as to what makes one FE head much different than the other? Even looking at exploded views of these heads, they seem much too "standard" or "basic" for one too differ from the other. Someone also recommended I send my heads to get work done. What work would need to be done? Seems like a valve adjustment is as far as you could go when it comes to doing "head" work. I always was under the impression a head was a head. Only other option was aluminum for light-weight purposes.

Any information on this subject is much appreciated.

 

There really is a great deal of differences between different styles of heads. There are low riser, medium riser, high riser, tunnel port, + SOHC, just to name the major Ford players. They were intended for different uses and came out at different times. Your truck, if STOCK, has the MR head. Barry Rabotnik and Jay Brown both have books Survival Motorsports News and Literature that have an explanation without getting too deep into the history of them, but will explain where one might be better or worse than another. Essentially, the height of the intake ports on the L, M, and H riser heads is what is different, with a concurrent change in the intake manifold ports to go with those heights

 

As far as "getting work done" that can vary based on intended usage from a simple valve job with 1 angle i.e. the valve and head have matching angles ground into them at the seat, to a multi-angle VJ where the head and possibly the valve is cut above and below the seat to allow more air and fuel to flow past the valve, to grinding the entire port for more airflow. Bowl work is basically where the area under the valve after the intake port turns down towards the combustion chamber or before it turns towards the exhaust port. Putting larger valves can help flow but if the valve is too close to the cylinder wall then it can hit the wall or block flow of air around that ide of the valve. THAT will be a problem with trying to put a 427 head (4.230 bore) onto a 390 block (4.050 bore) and is called "shrouding"

 

For your 360, the stock D2TE heads are fine. 360s suffer low compression and a sunken piston. There is little you can do to improve them, and nothing you can do to make a performance engine out of one.

The "little" you CAN do is a 4bbl manifold with a small 4bbl, and a good set of headers. The stock iron T or S marked manifolds work just fine. Not a lot of money, and others here report a noticable improvement in performance.

As for FE heads, the big mix of HR, MR, LR etc, plus SOHC were all in the 1960's. From 1972 (and probably earlier, maybe 1969) on, FE heads were all pretty much the garden variety the same or similar to the stock heads on your 360. Those heads will support 300 honest HP with other mods like higher compression and cams. Porting etc, a little more. Aluminum heads would be considered when doing a performance rebuild as the cost of reworking stock heads often exceeds 50% of the cost of a set of aluminum jobs.