Re: Are Ford 352, 360 390 Heads Interchangeable

Posted by Hal/WA on August 10, 2006 at 15:53:20 from (66.45.175.118):

In Reply to: Are Ford 352, 360 390 Heads Interchangeable posted by Paul on August 10, 2006 at 08:07:54:

Some years ago, a friend of mine had a 66 Ford Galaxie convertible with a 390. It leaked oil and had a noise in it, so we took it apart. The noise ended up being a pushrod that needed to be a little longer (and was a real pain to figure out).

But one of the odd things about that engine was that the ports in the intake manifold were much smaller than the ports in the heads--like about 2/3 the size. It was a 4 barrel, and we had no reason to believe that the manifold had ever been off since the car was sold new. How a small port manifold would be installed on a big port, high compression engine is unexplained.

My buddy got another 4 barrel manifold with the right sized ports in the runners and we installed it, using the same carb as before. We put a new gasket set into the engine and a new timing chain set, but other than the different manifold, nothing else was changed. It was over 1 second faster in the quarter mile--going from a low 17 second car to a high 15 second machine.

I think there is a lot of interchangability in the FE engines. But you probably want more or less what you have had before. From my friend's experience, I would guess there are smaller port heads to match that small port manifold. I remember that his big port 390 required premium gas. You want the compression ratio to be about the same as stock, so you want the combustion chambers to be about the same as you have.

Maybe you can find out what you have now by checking the part numbers on the heads and looking up that number in a book of specifications. But I would just remove the heads I had and see if they can be rebuilt. If they could, then I would know that they will work properly and would also save some time and money finding other heads. Good luck!

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