And you did not check locally to see the cost of having a set rebuilt? $1300 is stupid high you could have bought a set of heads likely had them rebuilt for half of that.

 

I checked locally didn't find much of a selection and the ones I found were pushing $350 a piece.

 

Combustion chamber designed for leaded fuel? E7 heads are a door stop. Look at any modern small block Ford head they all use a modified(read enlarged) early style combustion chamber. Which still works today very well, especially with today's modern gas.
Most of the valve train modifications are only required AFTER going to a cam not designed or necessary for the street.
Are we talking REAL street or Wannabe racer street?
Most real street engines don't see much over 4k rpm and infrequently if they do.

 

Rusty, I get where you're coming from, I was told multiple times that going with aftermarket aluminum heads was the only way to go because they were just a few dollars more. I just wanted to point out that nobody ever mentions that with those aluminum heads you also have to add the cost of pushrods and guide plates, rockers, and probably taller valve covers too...and nobody ever wants the cheap rockers either...you want the good ones. Suddenly your $300 becomes $500 or more. And $300 bucks (or more) may not be a lot of money in the engine building world, but it is a lot of money for somebody wanting to add a little power or build a street engine on a budget.

I'm far from an expert in this world, but I have to agree that $1300 seems crazy high to me. I bought a set of refreshed stock GT40 Explorer heads on Ebay in the spring of 2018 for $550. Maybe I was just lucky, but an added benefit of the Explorer GT40 heads is that they don't have the thermactor ports, so also no thermactor humps in the exhaust ports. Most people suggest removing these in all of the other SBF heads, so it's a step saved with these heads. I could see somebody wanting a lot more money for a set of known GT40 Cobra heads...they're the ones that seem to be harder to come by.

This is an important point and oh so true. I have little advice to give anybody, but I think it's important to not go crazy buying race parts for a street engine. Once you get past the basics (cam/carb/headers) on a street engine, a lot of times you're just paying for peak HP that you'll never use.

I love my little budget built 302, but I think if I was going to spend any more money building it than I did, I would have put the money towards a nice 351w.

 

I know you're wanting to do heads and not a cam, but I would suggest doing the exact opposite. Personally, I think upgrading the heads without changing the cam is kind of a waste of money. If you already have a 600cfm carb, spend the money on a 4bbl intake, a cam/lifter/chain kit like the K31-230-3 or the K31-234-3 and a set of shorty headers to get the old girl breathing better. That and some fresh gaskets and fluids will eat up your $1000 bucks.

https://www.summitracing.com/int/par...30-3/overview/

That's just my 2 cents worth.

 

Oh I know. But my thing is I am going from a flat tappet engine to a roller engine so I cant really reuse the pushrods I have anyways. I also have pedestal mount rockers which I don't think I would want to attempt to run them anyways. For me I know I probably don't need the Renegade 165 AFR heads for a street 306 but Im already this much into my build why choke the build down with stock heads is how I am looking at it. If I wanted to pinch pennies sure I could take and source some GT40 heads on the cheap with enough searching and have them rebuilt locally then source oem stock roller valve train components but I am sure OEM roller valve train components would cost me about the same as buying aftermarket parts.