My original, or whatever came with the car, heads are borderline trash....
worn springs, worn valves, worn guides, worn seals, nicked up mating surface... etc
actually past borderline trash

for now rather to put a ton of money into the motor all at once ( i can put in new valves, springs, guides, seals later) can i put any 5.0 head on my 289.... or is it just the gt 40 that will work
i wouldn't mind having to have them decked, as long as it doesn't take new push rods.

so if i am talking in circles like i always tend to...
Can i use e7te (5.0) heads on my 289?
And if so do they need decked?

 

you can run them, not sure about pushrod lenth though or any of that

 

E7TE heads should have the same pushrod length, but you should always check to make sure. GT40 heads would be a much better bet if you can score a pair.

 

+1 on my77stang. The flow and intake runner on the e7te heads does not seam to be very good. Try to get some heads in the 145-160cc intake runner range. GT40s fit that bill.

If you deck the heads, you might be able to get a comparable extra thick head gasket to keep the push rod geometry the same, but I don't think you can bank on that. You need to check it regardless.

 

when we would rebuild motors we decked the heads and block to get a flat surface. i'd say the norm was .015 - .020 between the two, and stock length pushrods were always fine as long as when we redid the heads the installed valve stem height was kept within spec.

you'll know when you bolt down a rocker with the cam lobe down and you have some lifter plunge. when you tighten it, there should be no slop in the pushrod but it also shouldnt be sunk all the way to the bottom of the lifter. it may be hard to feel for preload if the lifters are old and already pumped up with oil, so just watch how far the pushrod goes down into the lifter when you tighten it up.