hey everyone!

last year, i bought a half built rusted out project truck from a guy who gave up, and put it together to make it into a functional, but ugly, work truck. We call him Sanford.

Sanford is an 85 F250, and came with a 460/4 speed combo, but sometime in the time before I got Sanford, Someone swapped some parts around. i went to do a tune up on the truck, and discovered that the heads were D2VE heads. I havent verified what the block is, or even if it's a 429 or a 460, all i know is it seemed to drive and pull well enough.

Last week while working Sanford to max potential, one of the exhaust manifolds decided it no longer wanted to be in one piece, and broke in half. upon surveying the damage, i see i have exhaust bolts broken off in the head, and also, knowing that the truck puffs a bit of smoke on startup, we decided to pull off the top end of the engine for a valve job, a set of headers, and some fresh gaskets.

Now, i know the D2VE heads are less than desirable. Ive seen plenty of threads saying they work great for boat anchors and doorstops. As much as i'd love to go grab a set of D0VE heads and toss them on, it's not gonna happen, not on this truck. But what I am asking is if there is anything I can do to help remedy the issues with these heads? have the machinist mill them a bit more than usual? any suggestions??

otherwise, i'll just have them gone through and put em back on as they were. they may not make metric tons of power, but it was plenty for old Sanford.

 

You can always do some port work, blend the seats and put a back cut on the valves. One thing, putting fresh heads on a high mileage old short block usually doesn't work out. It could end up burning lots of oil.

 

yeah, since i posted it, the engine got tugged, it's going to need more love than originally expected.

i may do a little work inside those heads when it's apart. cant hurt, right?

 

 

I've heard a lot of things, on how people love them on a supercharged application. The truck actually ended up taking a different route, whomever swapped this engine into the truck didnt understand the difference between "internal and external balancing" so the engine was re-assembled, pickled, and set in the corner. I'm not working on a 79 460 to put in the truck.