other mods include crow cam (not sure what but previous owner said 2 grinds on from au 220 cam???), has pretty good top end. still running std ho manifold so not expecting a major increase until that is improved upon. it is meant to be ported slightly though. full exhaust. running mafless tune with microtech ecu. microtech is currently off getting software enabled so that it no longer needs to be 'piggybacked'. power goes to the ground through a 3.9 lsd.

dyno'd at 158rwkw and from experience i'd say its a flat/low 14 sec car so hopefully with the gt40p's it will go very close to cracking into 13's.

why can't jobs be simple and straight forward! turns out the e7's i pulled off have had a bit of port work done in so much that the port openings are actually bigger on both intake and exhaust than the gt40p's. i've also noticed it has double valve springs so i'll have to swap all them over as well except i don't have a spring compressor tool. i'd imagine the cost of the tool will be less than getting someone to do it for me though.

from the way people carry on about these gt40p's i thought it was going to be chalk and cheese between the 2 but now it seems there will be very little advantage from this exercise. i'll leave the intake ports as they are as they match quite well with the gasket and manifold. the exhaust ports however are a bit smaller and rounder than the extractors so i might get them looked at although i don't think flow will be affected too much as its going from a small hole to a big hole.

i also have next to zero funds to improve on them so don't go suggesting any wild makeovers for the heads. at least if i tell people its got gt40p's it sounds better than e7's

this project finally got injected with some good news. after having the heads looked at and gettng told the valves are close to burning out i sent the heads back to the wrecker (3 mnth warranty) who sent them to his cylinder head guy, who said that there was nothing wrong with them and they were like new. this was always going to happen and after argueing with the wrecker i gave up and took the heads as they were. they did actually clean up one of the ports that had had water in it due to being out in the weather.

i wander back down to lonsdale engine worx and fill him in thinking it was going to cost me another cupla hundy to reseat all the valves. long story short, someone had contacted them chasing a standard head for a e series v8 and they told him better to buy a pair than just 1. he asked me what i wanted for mine. i said about $200 due to them having some port work. he said he would talk this guy into buying mine as they looked good to him. instead of giving me $200 cash he is going to machine cut in all the valves and seats for me in the gt40p's and give me $50 cash. i couldn't believe my ears. so now they should be good for years.

bout time something turned for the better.

well done,turning the money pit around,very lucky

its actually going to cost me $50 now as i'm getting them blasted and tidied up a bit. got the phone call to pick them up bout an hour ago so hopefully tonight she'll be ready to make some noise. got my computer back yesterday (microtech) so everything is starting to come together finally. i'm so glad that i could afford to have the car off the road due to me being on night shift so i din't have to rush anything or stress too much when things went south.

i'm not expecting any major gains as i'm still running ho intake, which although its slightly ported, is not the best flowing device in the world. i do have 65mm tb and the fact that i'm running mafless means less restriction there as well. before i had 158rwkw so if i can get closer to 170rwkw i'll be happy. i don't think the economy should suffer much if any as most of the improvements are to do with the efficiency of the head.
intake valves are 1mm bigger too i discovered after pulling them apart.

also to all the s.a. guys. my opinion of athol pk ford wreckers was never too high but now it doesn't even register. they are the biggest bunch of knobs out there i've ever met. i could go on...

humpty's nearly back together again.

these are the heads as they went on

as you can see they are a darn sight better than how i bought them and it cost me $50 plus my old heads.

all machine cut valves and seats, blasted and valve stem seals. came up a treat.

the plugs better last a long time as impossible to get to 1 of them with exhaust bolted up. yet to put dizzy cap back on so not sure how the leads will go.

bought some sandpaper to try to polish up rocker covers and engine cover but not sure if i've got the patience for the cosmetic stuff at the moment. i just want my baby back up and running.

o.k. time for some help. i need some detailed pics of where some vacuum lines go. the ones i need run from the front of the intake manifold on the drivers side off the top of a coolant sender looking thing. i have worked out where two of them go but have a third left over. if someone can help me out here that would be much appreciated.

also had one more drama. filled up coolant only to discover that at some stage i must've loosened the thermostat housing. water came seeping out. now even after i've done it up it still seeps out a little bit. if i put some bars leaks or similar through the system will it be enough to seal there or should i not be such a tight slacker and drain it again and hit it with a bit more gasket goo.

had it fired up tonight but due to the fact that i tried to cut a few corners when pulling it apart i have the beginnings of ice coffee in the sump. i had only serviced the cooling system about a month ago so instead of draining the cooling system i only let out what i thought was enough to get the level down below the heads. when i took the heads off i discovered i hadn't let quite enough coolant out and i'm hoping this is when water got in the oil.

also when it fired up the lifters were pretty noisy. i'll be changing the oil tomorrow (also annoying as i'd only just done that too) but not sure if that will improve the noise. i'm hoping its just cos its been 2.5 weeks since its been started so hopefully they'll quieten down after a bit.

was good to hear it making some noise again though.

another update for those who may have been wondering. had a coolant leak from thermostat housing so thats getting a new gasket. also discovered the lifter noise was actually rockers. i noticed that when i pulled the gear off the old heads they had little shims under them. thought nothing of it and fitted them to the gt40p's the same. turns out the shims shouldn't be there so that should fix the noisy rockers. to do it properly i should've gone through and checked each one's lifter preload but they should all be o.k. the gt40p's were set up to factory heights so should all be sweet. should all be running later on today.

didn't bother buying new leads as i managed to get all my old ones on no dramas except for no 7. drivers side have no issues whatsoever. no 7 i couldn't even get a spanner on the plug and the lead, i trimmed about 5mm off the end of the boot and managed to get it on the plug o.k. it has about 1 - 2mm clearance from the headers. might whack some heat tape down there later.

needs tuning too as the computer (microtech) got sent away and software upgraded to not have to run piggyback. tuner (boostworx) can't fit me in till next tues though so bit of a wait. its o.k. to drive if i need to though.

if i haven't mentioned it before i will now. the work to the heads was done by lonsdale engine worx. i can't give enough praise to these guys. absolutely fantastic to deal with.

i got fooled in to thinking that the t on a set of heads means tickford but then spoke to a pro and he said there is no such thing as tickford in america the t stands for truck

finally got it tuned today and although i wasn't expecting huge improvements due to still having ho manifold, i was a little dissappointed.

previous with e7's


new run only managed to better that peak power by 4.4rwkw. maybe a touch more at other areas in the range. power and torque both up over the whole range so not too bad.



the fan at the front of the dyno stopped working due to the plug coming out of the wall a bit. didn't notice till afterward but didn't do any more runs. prolly the reason the intake temp is reading 60!!

the vacume line off the front off the manifold is for the emisons canister vacume i think

I'd say you have found the limit of the manifold...

yeah, one step at a time. the heads were actually slightly lower compression than the e7's and managed to get another 7 degrees of timing out of it. not sure where the limit of the injectors is either as from what i can gather they are still teh stockies. upgraded manifold is on the cards but not in the near future. funds need to recover.

had the old heads been shaved..?

not as far as i know but the rocker gear did have shims under them which i thought was strange. maybe that was the reason. i did seem to make good power on those heads compared to what most others with e7's get. the guys that took my e7's fully reconditioned them and found that after bolting them up they still needed shims so it wasn't due to valve seat wear.