Because they are dime a dozen. Mustang guys pretty much throw them away when going aftermarket and I for one have gotten a few sets and haven't paid more than 50$ for a set. Sure you could go ahead and put big valves and p&p them since they are off, I think they will help out over the factory heads
bottom end to me would mean the way i did it. i had the cylinders honed and new pistons put in. all of the bolts and bearings replaced. then the whole rotating assembly balanced. the shop guaranteed me i could spin 6k all day long with no problems. its good at this point to know what heads you plan on running so your set up with the right compression as long as it clears your stock heads. then i just had the seats hardened on the current heads for unleaded and ran that setup for about 15k miles(which ended up being about 4 years) until i had the money for the heads and top end i wanted. it ran better than stock with that setup and runs even better now that its done. with 230k on the bottom end i was a little leary of doing the top end first and driving it until i could do the bottom for fear of having to buy a new block and possibly re-buy the top end if something broke and came out that way.
The guy who has them had a maverick and was on this board, i remember talking to him 87 Saleen i think was his name.
They would be as good as your stock heads would be freshened up, no better no worse. They would make excellent paper weights or doorstops, though. Don't know if they're heavy enough for boat anchors. For a mild, stock rebuild they would be fine.
An E5 head is not as good as an E7 but they don't necessarily suck either. When you say, "...better than stock" we need to know what "stock" you're referring to. What year are your current heads? Tell ya' what....buy the heads and then send them to me. I'll do some minor porting for you that will fix you right up. $100. Let me know.
The cost of shipping iron heads around the country is cost prohibitive for the current value of Ford iron heads. You can buy a set of 69-70 351w heads on ebay that are in need of a rebuild for barely $200, but then it costs another $100 or so to ship em. Now you are $300 in before the work begins. After you do all the work necessary with performance things like porting thermactor bumps, screw-in studs and guide plates, hardened seats, better springs and retainers, etc, you end up easily having as much into them as a decent bolt-on aftermarket aluminum head. I have yet to find a compelling argument for factory iron heads in a performance application for any reason on a small block Ford. The aftermarket heads are miles better and barely cost more. Cylinder heads are the worst places by far to go cheap. For performance applications, if you are messing around with factory heads, you are either wasting your time or not very serious about making a lot of horsepower. Sounds blunt, I know, but there has never been a power revolution for the windsor Ford like the one when aftermarket heads came to the market. The windsor engine just wasn't a serious street motor until that happened. Now they rock! With stock applications, it is much less of an issue. If you are worried about the differences between an E5 head and an E7, you are not stepping up to the horsepower plate. One man's opinion. Flame away!!!
For the money, I would go GT40 or GT40P (the Ps are a little more difficult to fit spark plugs in under headers, but should be fine with exhaust manifolds). You can find them all over for $300 for the set, with valves and all, ready to install. For a steel head, these are probably close to the best, and definitely a good bang-per-buck. Of course, the best would be AFR aluminums, or similar...
Yeah. GT 40s i have seen them, but i dont have the money right now. And nitrous, i am just getting my motor broken in and in dont wanna screw it up.
I have to respectfully disagree. I've done a ton of research, and it's boiled down to this: A good set of used gt40/gt40p heads can be had in the 300-400 range. It costs less than $100 to ship both of them (dhl ground). that puts you right at the $400ish mark. I'm currently negotiating a deal with a set of barely used gt40 iron heads WITH 1.7 roller rockers for $400 + ship. A good late model 5.0 engine with a good cam, gt40/p heads, and lots of bolt ons will make 300 at the flywheel give or take. That's a screaming budget build. On the other side, finding a good set of aluminum USED heads is not easy, and who do you trust? ALuminum is much more prone to warpage, and cracking, etc, and a used set is still gonna cost you about $800 + ship, or an easy 300-400 difference, which, when it comes down to it, IS a big difference. If you want to buy new, forget it, $1200 easy. I think for a decent 12-13 second car, there is nothing at all wrong with some good iron heads. as far as the e7 vs e5 heads, they're practically identical, and you will see NO real HP difference between the two. Do NOT pay more than $50 for a set of used e7's, and I'd say the same for e5's. I do agree completely with you in the fact that when it comes time to get truly serious, there is no real place for iron heads, (unless you want to run nitrous). Many of us are on low budgets, and 300 Hp in a 2700 pound maverick should be good for some decent timeslips, +, if you're smart, you'll grab the entire 96-01 ford explorer 5.0 longblock for about $500-$700ish, that already comes with the gt40/p heads and a roller cam setupp (change the cam though please!) anyhow, my .02. I'm wrapping up an explorer engine install into my mustang as we talk, and am very excited to see the power gains over the old e6 headed engine that came out.
Fair enough Jeremy. I should have been more specific in that by iron heads, I meant mostly heads like 60s factory heads. The E5s and E7s aren't worth much to me or most other people, although they won't need some things like hardened seats. The GT40 heads are pretty decent, not great, but pretty decent for the money. I wasn't thinking of them when speaking of iron heads. Of course, World products makes good iron heads too. I meant factory stocker iron heads.
