Wait, stop, hold the phone- I really didn't read what I thought I read in another post , did I ?! Did somebody really suggest milling an intake manifold after the heads have been planed ? NO NO NO NO! STOP, Do Not collect 200$, do not pass go. The intake should never be milled. I thought you guys knew that already. When you are milling heads on an FE, if you cut .020 from the deck surface on the heads, you have to also cut .020 from the intake port side of the cylinder heads. Don't cut the sides of the intake at all, and don't cut the bottom of the intake at all. If someone at a shop suggests milling an intake, grab your parts and RUN out of that shop ! They have no clue what they are doing. That is a Chevy thing, milling intakes, it isn't proper on your FE . DF

 

Gee, but you are very wrong. Ford says you are wrong. In the Ford Muscle Parts book printed and sold by Ford in 1969 on page #47 says, and I quote "Milling the cylinder head means you must also mill the intake manifold to keep the ports in proper alignment. Take .037" off each mounting surface (the head sides) and .052" from the bottom of the manifold." This is for a .050" cut on the head. This ain't no damn small block chebby. The manifold fits under the valve covers.

 

Chevy thing huh? How about another trip to the machine shop every time you want to swap manifolds? Then try and find someone who needs a shaved intake after you swap?

Is there a logic to all this? Hmmmm....

Thanks for the reminder DF

 

JMO..I have never Takin the intake down..It always been off the Intake side of the heads to let the intake set lower...But I have heard some doing the Intake itself?

Russ

 

If all you are doing is level cutting the heads ( .005 or .010") there shouldn't be much difference. But if you are shortening the head a bunch (.050"), the intake is going to sit higher than normal if you don't shorten it also if you shorten the height of the intake, you have to narrow it too so it will fit properly. I'm just quoting Ford here, I would guess they probably know what works best. What if you had matched ports and then cut the head, the ports wouldn't match anymore. If you have a CAD program try it sometime, the difference will surprise you.

 

But if you cut the intake side of the head instead of the intake, it does the same thing but doesn't ruin your intake for ever.

My 390 was done that way, the only problem was the front and rear cork gaskets wouldn't fit under the intake any more - No problem, used RTV anyway... My block was decked too, so with about .020-.030" off the heads and a few .010's off the block, my machinist milled the intake side of the heads and it all lined right up on the first try (he was(is) very good at FE's).

I sold the intake as an unmolested intake - and it was unmolested.

art k.

ps: That was about 17 years ago now, so I may be mis-remembering, but I have the block and heads in the garage so I might go check them later ...

 

krewat said "the only problem was the front and rear cork gaskets wouldn't fit under the intake any more". If you do not cut the bottom of the intake, regardless of if you cut the head/intake surface on the head or the intake, the manifold will still be to high for proper gasket fix and that makes it not right. And I didn't have the option of oil resistant silicone in the late 60s. I still don't like using it to replace gaskets only to enhance the function. And 17 years is nothing, try remembering back to the 60's, thats 40 plus years.

 

I hear you!

 

Well Bear, Maybe I have been doing motors wrong all these years?? and I'am into a whole differnet animal with these FE's..But if you want you can look in my gallery and look at my A/EA that had the heads Milled both deck side and intake Side and the Intake dropped right on...and sealed very well....right off the trailer..it ran 8.90's..So I think for an A/Ea altered it ran Pretty well... JMO...

Russ

 

Bear, I'm not wrong, that article is.If you follow its instructions, you'll be wrong as well. It is just a badly written article, it is not like it was scripture or something. Obviously the author was not an FE guy, and the proof reader was no help either. Think about when this article came out- things were going badly for our guys in Veitnam, and we had a much higher body count on the news every night than we do now. Most of us were either scared of our number coimng up on the lottery, or one of our friends or family's number. Ford wasn't very careful about who wrote that article. There is lots of stuff printed in books that is not correct. All you have to do to convince yourself that article is wrong is take out your highschool geometery book and make a few sketches and do a little math. If we plane the heads .050, the ports and bolt holes will move .025 inward while they drop down. So why would you cut ..052 from the bottom of the intake ? We only need to drop the intake .025 vertically. Now supposing you DID cut the sides of the intake manifold, why would you balance a .050 cut with a .037 cut ? You wouldn't. the geometry of the FE, with its intake face at a 90 to the head decks, would need to be cut at a one to one ratio. So where did these goofy numbers come from? They are for a small chevy. I remember them from metal shop. The small chevy does not have its intake face at a 90 to the head decks, it is laid back at a less than 90* angle, and thus requires some strange cutting to fit right. Your Fe doesn't have these problems. Then there is the unmolested intake bit. If you are milling the heads, you have changed their dimentions from stock. If you then go and mill the intake, you then have another nonstandard part. Why would you do that ? Once you mill some metal off, it is heck to get it back on, and your intake is condemned to only fit with milled heads. That makes interchanging a problem. Ask your metal shop teacher, I did. When the article was still in print and being sold. He was making drawings on the board and it turned into an hour long geomtery lesson. He also taught us to think about it twice, and then mill it once. To add to all that, it is a PITA to mill the side of an intake, it doesn't have a good way to mount in the mill. But cutting the B surface of an FE head is fast and easy. I suppose if we searched around we might could find some copies of papers the Church published claiming that Galileo was a heretic and the earth was really flat. But just because somebody printed it doesn't make it true. DF

 

I'll throw my opinion in on this:

Save your money, dont go milling things. The only reason, IMO, to mill ANYTHING is to make it flat again, if it's out of spec. If you're considering milling to get the compression / quench space you want, you'd probably be ahead in the long run to build the motor correctly for this. This can be changing out head gaskets, a set of custom pistons, changing to different rods, etc. That way, you'll have intact heads, block, and intake that will be worth a LOT more down the road. Truely, I cringe every time I see people hacking off the block and heads trying to increase compression.

Plus, on the FE, the intake extends under the valve cover. When you start milling, you could run into problems. Say you take .050" off the block or heads. Guess what? Now, the valve cover gasket surface on the head is .050" lower than it is on the intake. Oil leak problems if the gasket cant make up the difference. So you mill the intake or head intake surface to even it up. Now guess what? The bolt holes for the valve cover are squished down closer together. This may or may not be a problem, you might be able to fudge things and have it fit. Then again, you might not. Depends on how much you take off.

My advice, build the motor right, and leave the milling to the absolute minimum to fix out of spec warpage. Flame away.

 

In my case, one side of the block was decked higher than the other, and it was a little off from square. My machinist leveled it all ways and checked the crank line. The heads were a little off too, mostly that the valves were actually deeper on one end, and it wasn't because the seats were off - it was because the head itself had been machined to be deeper at one end than the other, so off goes another .010" and so on and so on...

It also had a heck of a deck, being a pickup 360 block - so off that came until the TRW flat-top pistons were .030" away from the deck.

And after all that the guy actually checked the intake fitment, and worked on the intake side of the heads - we had already milled them to heck, what was another surface to trim?

 

Well yeah, I agree with you in that situation. When it's already screwed up, go ahead and make it right. But people that want to just start milling away just to increase compression, that's what I was getting at.

 

All I can say is it is not an article by anybody except Ford Hi-performance people. And you may be right about the numbers because I seem to remember somewhere in another Ford printed Hi-Po book that said the original numbers were in error and gave new numbers, but I can't find which volume it is in yet. Your theories as to what is right or wrong doesn't make Fords statements wrong in the 60s. They probably even had engineers in on the Hi-Po development. It wasn't just somebody that printed this info, it was the FORD MOTOR COMPANY. You just aren't listening, I quoted Ford Motor Company, I didn't claim I got it anywhere else. So go tell Ford they are wrong about their engines. Though I doubt they will listen to you.

 

Bear, there is no need for me to tell Ford they were wrong, they already know. Just as you remember, Ford printed later editions of their 'Off High Operations' Manual that admitied the mistake and corrected it. I suspect that the ones guys are reading that have the old numbers are pirate copies of the originals. The ones with the bad numbers, and the updates, have all been not available from Ford for at least 35yrs. DF