460 Head Mods

[interceptor1985]

Hey I need to know all the stuff I can do with this 1975 Lincoln MK4 it has a 460ci engine and a C6 tranny and a ford 9" rear.. I would like to know what headers fit , what CHEAP heads would make more power , and What Carburetter should I use?

I plan on just using a 3" Flowmaster two chamber duel exhaust.
And yes this means I am getting The lincoln.

[91LTDProject]

http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthread.php?t=18429 I cant offer any info, but this thread seemed to bring out the 460 in everyone.

[Mercracer]

What is your budget? The cam and intake are the worst part of that engine. Low compression does not help. Keep the heads you have for cheap performance. Your budget will dictate any recommendations of your next steps.

[Archangel]

Mercracer, what's yer opinion on home-porting the heads? You know, with a 1/4-shank die-grinder, for gasket matching and removing casting bumps down the runners, maybe some work around the valves? Also do his heads have thermactor bungs in the exhaust ports that can be removed?

[Mercracer]

There can definitely be benefit to home porting. The problem is that people are often not willing to spend the time to do it right. You should have a quality grinder and a selection of bits including stones and rolls not just coarse bits. Slow and easy is the ticket. Don't remove any more material than you have to. It is easy to mess up a set of heads with a steel grinding bit and an impatient hand.

[Mercracer]

Stealth or Stealth CJ is my first choice with a cam change

[HerMajestysMechanic]

Does someone make a set of roller rockers for this motor? And if so, I dont suppose any of y'all know what the measurement would be?


The Admiral

[Mercracer]

Does someone make a set of roller rockers for this motor? And if so, I dont suppose any of y'all know what the measurement would be?

Everyone makes rockers which fit.............

The ratio is 1.73:1. If you use BBC rockers the geometry is off just a bit with the 1.7 ratio.

[Mercracer]

JBA makes a set of shorty Mustang headers that look pretty tight.

[Pirate]

There can definitely be benefit to home porting. The problem is that people are often not willing to spend the time to do it right. You should have a quality grinder and a selection of bits including stones and rolls not just coarse bits. Slow and easy is the ticket. Don't remove any more material than you have to. It is easy to mess up a set of heads with a steel grinding bit and an impatient hand.

One other thing? This is about WHAT to 'remove'.

If you are new to porting, don't get carried away with it. Just remove casting flash, bumps, maybe some light smoothing of the valve bowl, but don't get carried away with it. It is really easy to destroy the short-side radius and make dead spots (where the air isn't moving, worst case scenario being the port floors of a 351C 4V head), the proper way to do porting is flowbench/smoke wand to make sure the stuff you are doing is actually working, some heads don't respond that well to porting (GT40P for example, other than some casting flash removal, there's not much you can do with it, you get reversion problems), and most people obviously don't have access to flowbenches.
The other problem is that you have eight cylinders-worth of ports to get exactly like the other. THAT is the fun part. No two ports are alike. The trick is making all of them the same.
Another issue? Cast iron. This stuff is a pain in the ass to work with. You honestly need to get some (expensive) carbide tips, and a really good die grinder, plus a good air compressor that can keep up the CFM demand of the die grinder that you will be using.

[Mercracer]

Screw air. Electric is the ticket... You can be in your basement in the AC and not have the compressor noise. When you stop grinding, the noise stops. You can get a flexible shaft grinder that will get the job done for around $200 or less.

[Pirate]

Hey I need to know all the stuff I can do with this 1975 Lincoln MK4 it has a 460ci engine and a C6 tranny and a ford 9" rear.. I would like to know what headers fit , what CHEAP heads would make more power , and What Carburetter should I use?

I plan on just using a 3" Flowmaster two chamber duel exhaust.
And yes this means I am getting The lincoln.

To summarize:
Those engines still make a load of power, with low compression. As Mercracer says, the intake and cam are the worst pieces on this engine, the cam being retarded anywhere from 8-12 degrees from Ford (via' the timing chain), and the intake being based around the motorcraft 4v(turd carb for anything other than driving downtown). I have done only a cam/springs/intake/carb/advance spring swap and dramatically changed the way the vehicle ran. Make sure the distributor is working correctly, and have someone toss an advance spring kit in it(I use the Mr. Gasket kit, around $10 or so), where full advance occurs at around 2000-2500 rpm, really wakes that car up. Beyond that, the exhaust manifolds are going to be the smaller smogger type, if you can add the earlier larger exit port manifolds (before 1973), that's another little pick-me-up. Or, if you can afford headers...

[Pirate]

Screw air. Electric is the ticket... You can be in your basement in the AC and not have the compressor noise. When you stop grinding, the noise stops. You can get a flexible shaft grinder that will get the job done for around $200 or less.

I have the 'deluxe kit' from Dremel, I have tried 2 different models. It doesn't remove cast iron that quickly, at least for me, anyway. I haven't found an electric die grinder worth a darn, although there is a business contact of mine that has one that remove a shitload of cast iron in hurry, and he won't tell me where he got it. It makes almost no noise. He had the rough porting done on a set of small-port big blok chev 427 heads rather quickly, maybe two hours...it doesn't bog.

[Mercracer]

Milwaukee for the big stuff



I was thinking of the old Dremel which looked like just a motor that you hung on a stand. It was made to be used only with a shaft. I just went to their web site and they don't even have it listed. I will have to pull out one of my old catalogs and see if someone else makes one like that now.

[Pirate]

Milwaukee for the big stuff



I was thinking of the old Dremel which looked like just a motor that you hung on a stand. It was made to be used only with a shaft. I just went to their web site and they don't even have it listed. I will have to pull out one of my old catalogs and see if someone else makes one like that now.

Now THAT would be worth the money.
You can still buy the dremel equipment, or at least I have seen it in either Lowe's or Home Depot recently. I attempted to use two different dremels on cast iron heads....neither one of them would cut very quickly, at least not as quickly as the monster die-grinder I used to own (locked up finally, wouldn't stay lubed, and seized)...I have another one, not as big, but more useful for tight spots (angle die grinder).