Shiny new parts

The weight (in lbs) of one iron head and rocker arms

The weight of one aluminum head with rocker arms

Side by side

1.8" intake/1.45" exhaust valve on iron head, 2.02" intake/1.6" exhaust on aluminum head

The caliper is set to the width of the exhaust port on the iron head, look at the difference!

The caliper is set to the width of the intake port on the iron head, big difference!

The aluminum flywheel is 11 lbs lighter than the stock iron one

Comp Cams steel roller rocker arms

Crane XE282HR roller cam. It's an aggressive cam typically used in street driven stroker small block Fords. I am using it because, in theory, it will not have so much torque that it becomes difficult to drive, but will have a lot of power at the top of the rpm range.

Turning up the power

One thing led to another and I decided to get more power into the car. I have two 5.0 engines and each has it's pluses and it's minuses. The engine in the car has a roller cam but has a lot of mileage and is not suitable for big valve heads because the pistons do not have valve reliefs. The other engine came out of a truck and therefore does not have a roller cam but it was rebuilt recently and was supposed to have ported/polished heads and good pistons. I took the truck engine apart to see what I had and here are the pictures of what I found:

The bad news is that it has a flat tappet cam but the great news is that the block is machined for a roller cam. I ordered a Comp Cams XE282HR hydraulic roller cam to slide in it's place. It's an aggressive cam but this is a race car and there won't be much idling.

Those are pretty small valves and a large combustion chamber-in other words, low flow and compression ratio. I ordered a set of ProComp aluminum heads with big valves, stiff springs and a 60cc combustion chambers.

The pistons are .030 over hyperutectic with valve reliefs. These are a pretty good quality pieces and will handle big valves and decent horsepower

The intake ports didn't look to be ported and were smaller than the intake gaskets

The exhaust ports had one small bump ground away but as you can see, are a lot smaller than the exhaust gasket holes.