what sort of things should I do? Would getting a chip be the quickest and most effective way of going about things?

 

Sorry Kens64, I read your post wrong. My bad.

Ken is correct you will not see any performance increase by running premium fuel in your truck without having a custom tune loaded to take advantage of the higher octane.

Your 460 should be programmed to run on 87 octane.

 

The best thing to do would be to have your truck dyno tuned. SCT and Diablosport are the best out there right now. You can go on there sites to find a dealer in your area. They will create custom tunes to suit your needs and safely increase power while correcting the air/fuel ratio as well as firming up the transmission. With all the money you put into your truck I would go a little further and get the truck on the dyno.

I doubt you will be able to find an off the shelf tuner for your truck. A custom tune is far better than any off the shelf unit anyway.

 

thank you thats a good a great point, but i live in Maine and all we have is like a McDonalds and a Wal Mart lol, probably could find one tho in Mass or New Hamshire.

 

This will not happen. The cylinder does not suck anything back into the cylinder. The exhaust valve is closed. If it did, it would be sucking burned exhaust gasses back into the cylinder with headers or manifolds. Also, when you start an engine that is ice, ice cold, the flame going past that exhaust valve is pretty warm.

The burning of valves from open exhaust stems from the days of carburetion. When a stock exhaust system was opened to more flow, it had a tendency in some cases to cause the carb to lean out. Lean is hot, and invites detonation, and pre-igniton, and this elevated combuston chamber temps burned valves, and pistons. With todays computer managed systems, it recognizes these conditions and adjusts the fuel/air mixture accordingly. jd

 

This forum is packed with people that have alot of knowledge. So it wont hurt to drive around with open headers? Now my question is, will I loose power with open headers? Without the exhaust sucking out the fumes? Or do the long tubes tri-y's sort of act as a miny exhaust system in themselves?

 

Usually, when using headers for power purposes, they are left open. It depends on header "tuning" and design. On a stock vehicle there may not be enough difference to notice with the headers open or with pipes attached, unless the stock exhaust system was very restrictive. jd

 

I have read that the 460 responds best to exhaust mods. You got long tube headers didn't you? I think in 20 miles the engine should warm up enough to radiate heat to keep that cold air idea at bay. I wouldn't worry about driving it then. I wouldn't go crazy with it though. When I put headers on the Capri, I chose to haul it down to the shop. I have my own trailer though so it didn't cost me anything extra. It sure did sound sweet driving it on and off the trailer though.

 

Yeah I will gentle on her. Hey guys this shop called me back and said the manifold bolts were brand new, and that a chunk of the head was chipped off on one of the bolts and thats why it is leaking all of a sudden after the dealership put on a an EGR tube a year ago. Would you need to take both manifolds off to install a EGR tube?? This is really bad, my head is chipped..So one is going to pay dearly, he said some one had to of done it because the bolts were brand new and theres no way that you would put manifolds back on a broken head unless you were trying to hide something...

 

http://www.devcon.com/devconfamilypr...m?familyid=124
It's worth a shot to try and fix it with that or another of their products.
Getting the most power out of anything the first thing to do is to be certain
you are completely burning the air fuel charge that is already in there. With
that goal in mind a high voltage coil with the plug gap opened as far as you
can get it without hurting performance. Indexing plugs also insures you are
exposing the spark to the mixture, Buy 3 sets of plugs from different stores
hopefully you get plugs that were made at different times (same brand/temp
of course) What you want is the opening of the electrode to face the center
of the chamber, make a mark indicating the ground electrode and screw the
plug in until you find one that is the best fit for that cylinder. Matching the
ext ports with the gasket and the manifold will help the same goes for the
intake side if you ever take that off. Don't run straight for the hi test pump
if it isn't being burnt (higher octane=slower burn) then you are literally sending
money out the exhaust pipe an air fuel ratio gauge is a good thing to have
wideband o2 sensors are starting to come down in price I found a site on how
to make your own gauge it wasn't to hard of a circuit but I guess I didn't favorite
it and I haven't found it again, It's a good thing to have so you know what is
happening with actual numbers instead of a feeling or sniffing your ext pipe!!

 

wow man, that was a lot of good information. So, I mean what sort of performance gains could I see from a change like that? I assume now would be the best time to do the plugs while the engine is getting the head taken off right?

 

I was having a pinging problem on my 74' F-100 302 so I called Jacobs performance to see what they recommend. (They manufactur high output ignitions) They sold me on a set of there wires and high output coil and told me to open the plug gap up another .010"-.015" over stock. There stuff did get rid of the pinging.

It doesn't really do you any good to have a wide band o2 gauge on a fuel injected vehicle if you do not have any way to reflash the computer to fix it.

If you get your truck dyno tuned they monitor air/fuel ratio along with a bunch of other stuff to generate a custom tune for your truck. They will tweak parameters until they get the most power out of it.

A strong ignition system is vital, but if the ignition system is in good shape you won't neccessarily gain much going with a high output ignition system.

 

Yeah I just replaced the ignition system last year. I probably wont mess with it all ,sounds like a lot of complication, and I have no idea how to do that stuff myself, so I really dont want to pay anybody to do it either. I will just look to get it dyno tuned like u suggested dfk

 

I got some encouraging news and some more dissapointing news. Turns out I dont need to replace a head, they were able to weld up the missing piece with a stud, so thats cool, but now the headers I waited for for 3 weeks and payed $700 for dont even fit. I knew when that ******* from Doug Thorley was trying to offload those headers on me in spealt trouble. They were for a F450-F700 and 2WD truck, not my 1995 F350 with 4x4, but he said it would still fit, well go figure now my trucks all apart and I have no headers in.

 

That really sucks. Call Thorley and tell them the headers are coming back. Make shure to get there UPS account number, you should not have to pay for return shipping on a product they said would fit.

If you got the $$$, I would just order a pair of 4 into 1 headers from summit or jegs. They may not be quite as good as the Thorleys but they will be tons better than the crappy stock manifolds. I usually get my stuff in 2 days from Summit or Jegs of course I'm in PA not ME.

Get headers on there and make some noise.