whats the significnce of dove heads on a 460 and are they any good?

 

The answers are in the 385 engine series forum.

This forum is for those topics that Don't have a forum related to it.

Hint : The Intake Ports are huge

 

Thread moved to 460 engine forum.

-Matt

 

Dennis the intake ports aren't any larger on the DOVE heads than any of the other standard passenger car heads, your thinking hte DOOE-R heads which were the SCJ units
Signifigance of the DOVE heads is they were regular passenger car heads for 70/71, 429/460s they are basically the same as the C8VE, and C9VE heads with the smaller combustion chambers, approx 75cc. Some people think they are the cats meow and pay stupid money to buy them, and I have even seen people pay big money to use them to switch out the earlier heads which are for all intents and purposes the exact same thing. They are also used to replace the later D3VE heads to increase the compression but they will actually usually increase your compression the the point that it's hard to run pump gas with them, and the truth is they don't flow signifigantly higher to be a big improvement.
The other thing about the early heads is they have studs for the rocker instead of bolt down rockers, but the later heads can be converted.

 

So are you saying it's not worth it to put a set of dove heads on my 79 460?
I can get a good set for about 100-150$ if they are good.This is because the knows me and wiil give me a deal on them.

 

No I didn't say they aren't worth putting on your 460 although they will raise the compression, and if you don't have good quench on the pistons your probably going ot have to reduce the timing and/or run premium gas since your dropping around 20cc on the chamber size you are gonna bump the compression up.
But I am saying it's not worth paying the stupid price to buy them and if you have good D3 heads on your engine already I wouldn't pay for DOVE heads even at $100 although I would maybe buy them for that and resell them cause I have seen sets of DOVE heads just pulled off an engine bring $350 on ebay. Otherwise I would save the money and buy some stainless valves ro something for my D3VE heads. Most people have this misconception that bolting on a set of DOVE heads on a later engine will give a huge boost in performance, truth is not really cause if you don't want to buy more expensive fuel you have to back the timing off to keep it from detonating itself to pieces, and in so doing you lose every bit of HP increase you gained with the compression. If your rebuilding your engine once again I wouldn't spend the money on the early heads just to gain compression there are better or atleast cheaper ways like buying flat top pistons instead of the dished pistons you will have to run with the doves. If you deck the block and bring the pistons to zero deck you will both increase compression and improve quench thus increasing the resistance to detonation or ping.
If your planning on running race fuel or atleast a lot of additives and want 11:1 or higher compression then by all means the early heads are definatly a plus.
in summary my opinion and that is exactly what it is. If you have DOVE heads then by all means go ahead and use them, running the appropriate dish piston to get your compression to a reasonable level, but if you don't have them then don't waste your money. Only exception to not paying for another set of heads would be if you happen to have open chamber D2VE heads, and if those are what you have then buy any other 429/460 head and it's going to make a HUGE improvement but if you have D2OE heads those are very good heads and worth lotsa money and will work really good.

 

Thank you...............

 

I'm going to have to disagree about the flow numbers on DO vs D3 heads. Look into the exhaust ports on both heads and tell me what you see.
I acutally have C9 heads for the 460 I'm building now. When they added 20cc to the combustion chamber the extra chamber was raised into the exhaust port. MAJOR restriction on the exhuast side after 1972. My C9 heads do not have the emission bumps in the exhaust side that the DO's have either. If you add dove heads to a D3 block you only get up to around 9.0 which should be ok on 87 octane.

 

actually it's about 9.28, and you won't have a good quench distance, actually you will have approx .070 quench distance which isn't close enough to help with detonation, and at over 9:1 without that benifit your not going to get it to run decent on 91 octane let alone 87 even the later blocks with D3 heads recommend 89 octane without the smaller compustion chamber.
And out of the box head no the C9 heads will outflow both the DOVE, and D3VE heads on the exhaust side I agree with that statement But remove the exhaust hump and the DOVE heads are just like the C9 heads you are running. but Scott J aka the mad porter, who is A. a member on this forum, and B. quit probably the best street head porter in the country in my opinion posted up on another forum that he is getting comparable flow with the D3 heads as the DOVE heads. The first thing you need to do with either one is remove the thermactor hump out of the exhaust but you need to do that with the DOVE heads too, and since those are the ones that this thread is about that is what I was talking about. But on any performance engine your not going to leave even the best heads untouched unless you want to waste all the time and money you put into the rest of the engine cause even the DOOE-R SJC heads can be improved with a little rubbin.
Heck I even did some minor exhaust porting, and bowl blending on both sides of my A460 heads, and those have impressive numbers right out of the box.

 

I'm pretty much building a carbon copy of this motor. Should be a good enough runner just to haul my bikes around. It's going in a 1977 1/2 F-150 4X4, 4-speed. I even considered decking the block down to 10.300 but decided it wasn't worth the extra money. I dropped the crank in yesterday and I still have about $550 in parts to order, mostly valve train. I know a 460 is a different animal but in my Mustang I'm running 9.5 to 1 with 14 psi on top of that on 93 octane.

I do have a question for ya, you mentioned SS valves for the D3's. My C9's are bare so I have to buy valves and they are longer than the D3's so I will be buying them new. Know of anywhere I can get stainless valves for less than $200? If not I'm just going to buy stock replacement valves for $180.
http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/116_0008_ford/

 

I disagree on the fact that the dove heads are not that good. I had a set of edelbrock aluminum heads on my 460, dropped a valve and cracked the head. I put my dove heads on slightly ported and put in new valves and hardened seats. With the dove heads I have higher compression and I gained about 20 horsies over the edelbrock heads

 

Check with Tim Meyer over at tmeyerinc.com He's one of the sponsors of this site and he got me a very good deal on some SS valves for the 400 I put together.

 

I'm not sold on the idea that the early heads can't be run on the street without racing fuel or additives. I run my stock 429 4V with D0VE heads with an advertised C.R. of 11:1 on the 92 premium we have around hear with no problem. The only modifications I've made to it are a Pertronix Ignitor ignition system with matching 40KV coil and a BG Road Demon 725 cfm carb. I run it at 4 deg BTDC timing which is the factory spec. Yes I do get a little spark knock when I load it up heavily especially if I'm going uphill but it's not enough to worry about. A little rattle isn't going to hurt the engine.

The D0VE heads have a small, fast burning combustion chamber which helps with detonation/spark knock and I pay close attention to keeping the engine cool. This summer I'm going to have the radiator gone through and probably put a 160 deg t-stat in it as well as a a higher volume water pump. I run a high water to anti-freeze ratio, just enough to get the low temp protection I need because water cools much better than anti-freeze. I haven't tried using any of the "water wetter" products in it because I'm not a big snake oil fan but some of the info I've looked at suggests it might be the real deal.

 

Bill it might be advertised as 11:1 comp but I bet it's not even close. In order for it to be 11:1 comp on a 429 it has to be zero decked, flat top piston with 8cc valve relief and an actual 75cc chamber. I am not sure what your block is so can't even guess at the deck hieght, and almost every stock 429 I have seen had a dish piston in it.
I am not saying that DOVE heads are not good, but I am saying they ain't worth the money when it comes to building a street engine for use in a pickup. Reasons are as stated, they are harder to get decent compression for use on lower grades of gas and still have proper quench distance, and they don't flow appreciably better than D3VE heads do with or without porting (with the exception of hte very early heads that don't have the smog hump in them, but even that can easily be takken out on the later heads), they aren't the instant bolt on HP some people keep suggesting, and do to the myths surronding them they are way over priced. The problem is that people will go out spend stupid money to buy a set then have to have huge dished pistons to get the compression ratio down to were they need it were as they could pay little to no money for a set of later model heads (and sometimes find them for free from people that just think that they have to have DOVE heads, and the D3 heads are just paperweights) run a slightly smaller dish and get the same compression and same hp out of them. And it is harder yet to get livable compression on strokers, so I really don't recommend them in those cases at all, but I feel if your going to go stroker your probably a lot better off with aftermarket heads anyway or your shooting yourself in the foot.
What I am trying to do is break this myth that DOVEs are instant hp on street vehicles, just like the sticky at the top of the forum says watch out for false info, I am doing this to save people money and disappointment.
I do feel there is a time and place for spending the money on DOVEs but on a mild to medium street driven engine they aren't the wisest choice, the reason I get so adement about it is cause some people (just read through this thread) are so adement that they are the only way to go, and if I am wishy washy people will just figure well they must be good or he would say otherwise.
If you read the thread about a pulling engine in this forum you will see that for his application I suggested the DOVE heads, and when you can run race gas and are looking for the most bang for the buck, and needing the comp but still have to stay with factory heads due to rules, then the DOVE or earlier heads are the cats meow.

 

I can't comment on the exact piston configuration of this motor because I haven't had this engine apart yet. The block is a D0VE which means it's the 10.300" height. I agree there are some questions about actual vs advertised C.R. which is why I used the term advertised.

As I've said before, I'm a big fan of squeezing as much power out of an engine as I can and I'm not afraid of a little spark knock as long as actual preignition isn't taking place. I get a laugh out of people I hear saying that they could never get all the "pinging" to go away on their engine. Believe me if their engine was actually pinging they'd know it because the pistons would all have holes in the top of them. Even cast pistons will handle a little spark knock and still run fine for many, many miles. If you try to tune all of the rattle out then you end up with a real dog of a motor on a non computer controlled engine.

So, back to the question at hand. There is no "magic bullet" for every situation and that includes bolting D0VE heads on in place of D2 or D3 castings. Now as PT Barnum said, "there's a sucker born every minute" and some of them run out and pay "stupid money" for D0VE heads. You can buy a set of magnaflux'd C9-D0 bare castings online all day long for less then $250. I don't think that's stupid money personally but if I decide to go with some aftermarket pieces in the future and someone offers me $500 for my D0VE-C pieces I'd be glad to sell them.