Hey guys wonderin what would be a good aftermarket head for my 289??

 

wow..... that kinda leaves things wide open.


best bang for the buck = worked over gt40p's for 600.00 from tristatecylinderheads.
best heads available = chiheads.com hybrid Cleveland heads
there are about 100 heads in the large gray area in between these two areas of the spectrum

 

I'd go twisted wedge heads.........995.00 at ford performance soulutions

 

TW's may require different pistons. Edelbrock Performers or AFR 165's should bolt on without problems

 

I've got Aluminum Procomp 3037's for my 302. Procomp's (not to be confused with RHS/CompCams) are about the cheapest thing out there and they are NICE! Now, the heads haven't touched the motor yet so I guess I can't swear by them yet but I think they will be badass. I paid $530 for mine new including shipping costs, I bought the bare heads so I could put the valves and springs I wanted in them. There's a hotrod shop called Gr8hotrods out of L.A. that sells these bare or complete on e-bay.

For good street performance, a good aftermarket head will be in the neighborhood of this configuration: 60cc combustion chamber, 180cc-190cc intake runner and if you can fit it, 2.02" intake valves, otherwise 1.94". Now that's just my idea of the perfect combination, I'm sure others will disagree...

 

For a 289 in street use, over 180cc is too much. The flow will be somewhat "lazy" at normal driving rpms. Stick to 165 - 170cc. With a 1.90 - 1.94" intake valve. Higher intake velocity and less shrouding will make for snappier response.


Norm

 

which leaves AFR 165's and Canfield 170's as probably the best heads out there fitting that bill.

btw, those procomp heads are known to not only be made from poor quality aluminum, they are know to be poor castings in general. they may perform great, but i would be worried every day that a seat was gonna fall out, a guide was gonna move, or that the heads would simply crack or warp.

 

Not a bad suggestion for street use, my suggestion leaned more towards high performance street. Norm is proably correct, with a stock 4.00" bore 289, 2.02" valves would probably be a bit big, causing valve shroud - that's what I meant by "if they fit". Your best bet is to stick with the 1.90" or 1.94".

In my opinion, a 165 intake runner is a bit small, it would give you good low end grunt but might be suffocated a bit in the top end... but I guess it depends on what type of performance you're looking for. 165cc would probably be fine for lower RPM daily driving/cruising.

 

I've heard that over and over but I've also heard it was more likely to be the case with older castings (maybe a couple years ago) and they are improving. The castings looked good to me and my untrained eye, I mentioned to the guy that built the heads for me about the rumors of bad castings, he said they looked as good as any Edelbrock or Dart he'd seen - and he's seen a lot! I was a bit leary of buying them at first, kind of the 'ol "you get what you pay for" adage, I hope that's not the case. Then again, maybe I got lucky with a good casting. The car will be up and running within a couple weeks so cross your fingers for me. I guess only time will tell.... If they blow up, I'll be on here ASAP asking for help I'm sure.

by the way, do you have any links to documentation on the bad castings? I had a heck of a time finding any information about these heads at all when I was shopping.

 

thats cause they are basically a no-name company and the castings are poured in china from molds modeled after american performance heads. some places claim their heads are cast in australia and not china - but i can assure you if they are having to compare themselves to crap, well.... they are crap.

the castings may *look* ok, but my biggest worry would be from the head getting warm due to normal operating conditions and then have a guide or seat fall out because of poor quality control over the aluminum alloy.

have you ever seen decent metal come from over there? i sure havent [8D]