I have a 318 head question.... I have heard the answer go both ways just in reading others' posts. I have a 78 B body Fury, with its original 318. I think it has the "163" heads, it's whatever it left the factory with. car has 55K original miles. never been apart, beyond resealing timing cover and intake. only deviation from stock so far, is true duals all the way to the bumper. still has 2 bbl and Lean Burn even. I have had this car since 2007. I'm 2nd owner, it had 38K on it when I got it.
I have a fresh from the machine shop set of '302 heads on the shelf. Surfaced just enough to assure a good gasket seal. something like 0.005-0.007. Are they or aren't they worth a $#!t? I've heard they are the best heads (they have the heart shaped closed chamber) and here lately, I have heard people say that they really aren't worth a S#!t. Stock (unported so far) vs the '163 heads are they worth a S#!t? are they worth any seat of the pants HP improvement, with all else on my engine being equal? Are they worth the effort to spend a Saturday afternoon swapping out?
I had one 318 that I did the Magnum head conversion on and really woke that one up when combined with the same cam and 4 bbl that I want to put onto this one.
I don't have any good Magnum heads on hand at the moment. These 302s are what's on my shelf.
I had somebody give me pretty good money via CL for the last set of std '163 heads I had. same thing would happen to the ones currently on this engine.
I do plan to lose the Lean burn, add a small cam, swap to a 4 bbl intake and carb (I have a couple of those here to pick from///an Offy and a Performer) regardless.
this will never be a race car, I never wanted it to be. but I want to wake it up a bit. These are what I have on hand, certainly not spending the coin on aluminum heads for this one. just a cruiser, and sometime back n forth to work vehicle in nice weather. My wife might take that one over for this year, if I get my D150 done to the point I want to get it to this spring. so it cant go too radical. AC still full of R12 and working. Want it to stay like that.
I may open them up (the 302s) and try to do a little porting on them (casting flaws mostly) if I can do so without screwing up the fresh valve job (they do have 16 new valves in them)
