hey guys

it's getting to be the time of year i put my truck away until next spring. and am looking for a winter project

i put on a 600 cfm Holley and headers last winter. I'm looking to do some more upgrades this winter. i'm thinking about putting on new heads, I've been looking at the Edelbrock performer rpm's

I'm not really sure how great they are, and don't know a whole lot about heads. I mean how hard can it be to swap them?...

If you have any other upgrade suggestions i'd love to hear too

Oh yeah, the trucks an '80 f100 with a 302. Edelbrock performer rpm intake manifold paired with a 4150, 600 cfm Holley

thanks alot guys

 

The Edelbrocks are great heads, but a bit of an expense and overkill in terms of flow for a mostly stock 302. If you can afford the Eddys, then that's great. The next logical step for you would be a bump in compression and camshaft. I would consider finding a good used set of iron GT-40P Explorer heads and a nice RV grind hydraulic cam. IIRC, the GT-40Ps should bump you up to around 9.5-ish, flow much better than stock and you should be able to do it all for way less money than just the price of the Eddy heads. With the increase in compression, head flow and camshaft, your truck will be a completely different beast.

 

Edelbrock heads are okay, for a bit more you can get AFR heads which are about as good as they get. Like he ^ said, probably more than you'd ever need on a stockish engine. You can run more compression with aluminum heads. More compression means free torque. Which is always a plus.

Since you're not in a hurry just shop around cl or some local swap meets. Used heads are just as good as new unless they're really mangled. Even with new guides and a valve job you can save $400 or more.

Head swap is relatively easy. Be sure to remove the drain plug from the block - it will keep coolant from getting in the lifter valley and piston bores when you pop the old heads off.

Heads plus a new cam would be good for 100 hp, depending. Fifty to sixty is more realistic in a truck unless you're running 4.11+ gears and winding it to 5,500 rpm.

Definitely think about upgrading the ignition. You don't have to drop big bucks on a new billet dizzy. Just taking/sending your stock duraspark dizzy to be recurved makes a huge difference in driveability.

 

Cam and "Thumper" E7 heads, should be able to do all of it cheaper then the Edelbrock's

 

Good point. I always make sure to change the oil before firing the engine up as well. Any water that does spill will go right to the bottom of the pan and will be the first thing going through the bearings on start-up.

 

Considering that this vintage motor spec'd at about 150hp all stock and the current state of the art for a natuarally aspirated 302 with a "stock" bottom end stands at about 400hp, there's lots of room for improvement. It'll cost a fair buck to match that 400hp motor but you can have 300ish horsepower pretty easily with a 260 duration cam, GT40 heads, 4bbl intake, and a FULL exhaust system... for example. Use better heads and you could have even more horsepower, but targeting big numbers tends to make the 302 a peaky motor very quickly with increasingly soft low rpm TQ and that's not exactly a truck friendly combination unless it has lots of gearing and you don't care about fuel milage. Here's a chart with flow numbers for many of the more popular cylinder heads, the older Ford heads aren't listed here but for the most part they are similar to the E7TE or GT40 castings in terms of port flow but have larger('75-'85) or smaller('63-'74) combustion chambers depending upon the vintage. The early heads also lack hardened valve seats so even though they would be an improvement over smog era heads it's not always feasable once you factor in the cost of installing seats and whatever else an old worn out set of heads might need and compare that to what you can get a pair of lightly used or refurbished GT40 or aftermarket heads for.

 

ok you guys are right, i've been looking on craig's and there are tons of heads kicking around. so the 5.0 mustangs came with gt40's and explorers with gt40p's? correct me if i'm wrong please lol

what are the difference between these, and which would suit me better?

 

The only mustangs to get GT40s were the exceedingly rare 1993-95 Cobras, the vast majority of Stangs got regular old E7's, it's the Explorer that had GT40s in '96 and then GT40p heads from '97.5 on. Of course all Gen1 Lightnings also got GT40s.

 

thanks paul, the search has started