The heads on your 72 would be D2TE-AA, and the 76 FE engines use the same head. Many ealier 352s and 360s would have been equiped with C8AE-H cylinder heads, which have the same size ports, valves and combustion chambers. So the cylinder heads aren't what is holding you back. The heads you have now have a small kidney shaped chamber, if you used older heads, like from 60-65, the chambers are bigger, and you will lose compression. There are some 60-61 hp heads that have very small chambers, but they might be tough to find. I would do the milling and use the shim gaskets and then play with the timing- it might not be a huge increase in power, but I'm sure it will be noticeable. Also, what carb are you running ? The holleys that come in ford trucks have annullar discharge booters, I think motorcraft 2 barrels have them too. Aftermarket holleys and Edelbrock carbs don't usually have them. They make a big differance in low speed power. DF

 

The heads I have, have the emmissions tubes that screw into each exhaust port, part of the emmissions piping. Which are now plugged. I didn't say that. Ford said, that the 1976 model 360 fe
truck engine came with a 8:1 compression ratio. When I rebuilt the engine, it had 100,000 miles on it from factory and never had been overhauled before. When I tore it down it had factory flat
top pistons in it, but it still was called an 8:1 compression engine. When I replaced the pistons with new ones, I ordered factory replacements for that model and they sent me what I had in the engine already, flat top pistons. Now, If I have flat top pistons and they come to the top of the deck then the chamber in the head is the only thing then that can affect the compression ratio
to make it an 8:1 engine. I don't know this for sure, but it is the only thing I can see that will effect the compression at that point. The carburator is the same 2v factory carburator, I'm not sure what brand it is. Don't get me wrong the truck engine has power and does OK. It still has the same power that it had before I rebuilt it, maybe even a little more with the new crane cam and headers. I just remember the power I had in my 1972 360 fe truck engine with the same 4 speed truck transmission. Right smart more power. Good lugging power that this engine doesn't have and I think it is due to the compression, I may be wrong, because it was a factory stock engine that had never been rebuilt. I don't know that's why I ask the question. Thanks for the replies. Duane in
VA.

 

352, 50 over pistons will put you where you want with compression. The have a deck height of 1.836 or 1.842. Think about it! It has the same crank. Same rods, just a smaller bore. But I think 50 over are the same as stock. And 80 over are like 30 over. I've never done it but always been curious of the specs. It's something like that. Anyway you can get oversized 352 pistons to crank a 360 up.

 

Excellent info and I hope it'll help the next person searching for that answer. I bet Duane got it taken care of by now too since his last post on this thread was Feb 2003. I wonder what he ended up doing.