E7 Heads

On my Frankenstein truck, the '84 351W (see sig., internally stock) has D8OE heads, supposedly the worst small block Ford heads made. The truck runs fine but is certainly no powerhouse. I can pick up a set of E7 heads very cheap. I am sure they would need some work, but freshened up, would they represent a good power increase over the D8 heads? I know the E7 heads don't compare to GT40 heads but are they worth doing anything with compared to the D8s?

All comments welcome.

Whisler wrote

On my Frankenstein truck, the '84 351W (see sig., internally stock) has D8OE heads, supposedly the worst small block Ford heads made. The truck runs fine but is certainly no powerhouse. I can pick up a set of E7 heads very cheap. I am sure they would need some work, but freshened up, would they represent a good power increase over the D8 heads? I know the E7 heads don't compare to GT40 heads but are they worth doing anything with compared to the D8s?

I have a set of those D8 heads removed from my 1984 302, and I can't give them away...lol. They're in good condition too...only about 35k miles on them.
If it was me and I was taking stuff apart anyway, I'd install the E7 heads. Even if you didn't port them or do any work to them, you'll get a nice bump in compression...half a point or more.

If you were going to get any work done to them, consider sending them to Thumper...he is THEE guy for E7 head work. He can port them and install GT40 valves, etc. Then, you get the flow of the GT40 heads but with potentially higher compression. The only problem with that scenario is that by the time you buy the E7 heads and pay to port them, etc...you can come close to the cost of nice aftermarket heads. Some shops will do some light porting for a lower cost...like just smoothing them out a bit and removing the Thermactor humps.

Still...even if you were just cleaning them up, I'd go with the E7 heads over the D8's all things considered.
I wouldn't take the thing apart just to install E7 heads, but if you had it apart anyway...

Others on here may advise differently.

I agree, wholeheartedly.  To reiterate:

The D8's are the worst of the bad.  E7's are less bad.

Thumper can make the E7's into good heads.

But by the time you have Thumper go through them you'll be within spitting distance of aluminum heads.  Tim Meyer talked me out of using cast iron heads on Dad's engine because the cost was so close to aluminum heads.  And, with aluminum you can run about 1 point more of compression on the same gas w/o knocking.