I am giving Bowstick a set of D8OE heads, pretty much brand new. I know they are not the best heads in the world, but I hear they flow as good as E7s if you work out the smog bumps. Before he picks them up...I would like to know if they are going to be an improvement over his stock heads if he does a little work on them? How much work will he need to do? Remember, the price is FREE, so any improvement would be...an...improvement...
The smog bumps are for air injection holes.The air injection set up adds fresh air to the exhaust gasses to clean em up and to help heat up the catalytic converter so it can do its job.
When you come over, I will show you where they are and how to knock them off. I will try to have one of my P heads off to show you how I did it on them.
According to some of the mustang sites... the D8OE heads may drop your compression a bit, which should drop you down to about 8.0:1. If you knock off the smog bump, they should flow about as good as E7 heads which according to Fletch's Carbureted 5.0 Mustangs list of head flows, is a little better than the 351 heads, but not as good as the GT40s. This is a great list of flow data on several different models of heads including numbers found after porting www.jason.fletcher.net/tech/flowdata/castiron.htm Since the E7 heads were on mustangs up to '95, then they should be good for as much HP as those cars made (215 HP stock), if not more if you add the right parts to go along with them. 215 doesn't sound like much, but compare that to the 72 maverick's stock HP of approximately 140 HP...
so there is going to be some gain...thats always good, and with the carb and intake it will help the flow alot. but can you feel a substantial difference with just the carb and intake?
Scott,, I have those head on my Stallion,, of course they have been heavily massaged. Flow is very good. I think he will be happy, especially when you consider all he is paying for is the work done to the heads. Dan
D8OE's are the "boat anchor" heads of small blocks. The huge 70 cc combustion chambers are their down fall. Unless you run em on a 302 shortblock with pop-up pistons, you end up with a crappy 8 to 1 (or less) compression ratio. Doesn't matter how well they breathe, if the compression ratio is in the basement, they're a big waste of time.(unless you're going to supercharge it, and even then the big chambers cost you in detonation increases)
Would it help to take .030 off the heads, and restore some compression? Just asking. How much would that give you in compression?
Is the deck thick enough to remove that much safely from the heads???Not to mention having the intake milled to match the heads afterwards.I would think a good ignition set up and a cam with good cylender filling potential should wake it up with those heads a bit.70 cc is a big chamber,cutting .030 off them is only going to bump them up to around 66-67 cc then add head gasket thickness and your back where you started.
The deck of my heads were milled,, but I have the pistons to notch the compression up to 10.5:1. I dont remember what was taken off the deck of my heads,, too many years now. But that is irrelevant,, I was building a motor from top to bottom, so I allowed for the larger chamber with the pistons. Dan
