I have a 351m on a 77 ford f250. I pulled the intake manifold today and got the valley pan out so i could remove the heads. The valley pan had small holes in it. I was wondering if it would be alright for me to put normall gaskets in without the valley pan and put the intake manifold back on?

 

You can do that, and use a set of Fel-Pro performance gaskets or whatever. But, alot of us here use a combination of both. I have the valley pan cut down so that it protects the bottom of the intake from oil coking on the bottom. I also have the Fel-Pro performance intake gaskets to seal up the intake ports between the heads and intake. This is a pretty good way to go.

 

Check out this thread from last week:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...d.php?t=490042