Well I dropped the engine off at the machine shop today to get rebuilt. Let me tell ya whats gunna happen to it first. I'm getting a lobey streetable cam to go with my 2400 stall. My heads are getting ported and polished. My intake and exhaust ports are getting ported. I have an automatic. And i also just put an adj FPR on it. And i am ordering a new fuel pump soon.

Now, I want to eliminate all of my smog stuff and/or most of my vaccum lines and all that stuff i can do without. Where do i cut everything off? What to do with the wires? What can i do with the pump, get a new dummy pully or a shorter belt? Anything helpful. Before the rebuild I had a problem with accelerating, it would stumble on its face and chug along. I am hoping to solve that problem beacause i had Numerous vaccum leaks.

Then I also need new injectors. I've read and i beleive i can go with 24#. Any suggestions? I like the price of the accels but i hear alot of bad stuff about them on the forum. Again any advice will be helpful.

 

Are you sure you want to remove them. They are not an issue regarding preformance. Except for converter removal, I have all emmisions intact and no drawback on power.

 

It is a little late now, but you would have been smart to trouble shoot your "stumble on its face and chug along" problems, BEFORE you pulled it out. Now you will be trying to do a break in procedure and trouble shooting at the same time.

How much money are you spending on those marginal, cast iron, heads. Between a stock valve job and all the porting and polishing you are paying to have done, you might be better off making a change.

RACE ON!!!

 

Just make sure your porting guy gives you some flow numbers,, I would be anxious to see how well he can make them flow. As long as you dont have crazy goals, more/better flow from iron heads is absolutley doable. You can only port them so much because they are prone to cracking, and you have the obvious compression ratio and weight issues. Another set of new aluminum heads would cost a minimum of $900 if my memory serves me, like Edelbrocks

Buy some Ford SVO 22's or 24's, SVO is rated at 39 PSI not 42 PSI like GM, I believe 85's already came with 24's o all you need to do is have yours rebuilt for like $100 from www.cruzinperformance.com.


Also, port and gasket match all of your intake parts too, if you have not done so already

CFI-EFI do you have aftermarket heads? What brand do you have?

 

Those wheezy, old, cast iron, stockers, haven't been off of the engine since the General screwed them on there over 22 years ago.

My point about Biff Buyer's heads, was that by the time he has a good stock valve job, probably with a few new valves, reconditioned guides, and new valve springs, he could easily have $500.00 invested. If an only decent P&P job runs a grand, he's paid for some better heads. Now if he can do some good with the old heads, on his own, and only have to pay for the refurbishing, he could end up ahead of the game.

RACE ON!!!

 

If you are into the performance game the 85 heads make excellent boat anchors. You will be better served by putting your bucks into some newer higher flowing heads.A set of Vortec iron heads can be had for the price of attempting an update of stock heads.

 

I STRONGLY suggest you reconsider the cylinder head mods. The money spent to modify them won't give you the most bang for the buck. The castings don't have much port wall material to work with and can easily be ground through when porting them. As me how I know.

Another point is the slots in those heads will need to be elongated using a Louis Tool so you won't end up with a bunch of bent pushrods after installing a high lift camshaft. If memory serves .480 is the limit for valve lift when using the stock length pushrod slots.

For just over $900 you can buy a brand new set of aluminum heads, with all the good stuff installed and ready to bolt on.

When I removed all the emissions gadgetry from my 86 I began at the source; say the EGR valve or AIR pump, etc.

Removed and blocked it off, then all the hoses and associated stuff and
blocked off the vaccum at it's source.

If you're SURE you will never want to re-connect system, you can cut, and remove the wire(s) and cap off the remaining ends with a little screw on cap or some other means to prevent a short-circuit. Or you can just cable-tie them out of the way in such a manner that they can't easily be seen.

I removed all the brackets, solenoids, hoses, connections, etc., from the front of the engine, not necessarily for any performance enhancement but to unclutter the engine bay and making working on the engine much easier.

I removed the hoses from the AIR pump, then removed the pump, gutted the internal fins and reinstalled it. I removed the tube leading to the catalytic converter and capped of the converter at that point.

I removed the 9th injector and blocked off the hole in the intake manifold. I also capped off the fuel feed to that injector at the rear of the driver's side fuel rail. I removed the sending unit at the front of the intake manifold.

I removed and capped off the exhaust pipe on the passenger side of the intake; the one that crosses over the valve cover.

I also removed or modified anything that would inhibit easy removal of the valve covers. This paid off in spades as time passed and I had to pull the covers from time time. A job that use to be a nightmare, now can be done in five minutes or less.

Over the years, I haven't had any problem that can be contributed to the removal of any of that stuff.

Hope this helps.

Jake

 

Sorry, I thought you had bought some Edelbrocks, some time back, my fault!

 

Oh yeah, another Alum head option is used 113 Vette heads, although they arenot easily ported from what I have read.

I bought a set from the Vette2Vette for $325 once.

 

Maybe that was me you were thinking of. I have a small set of the rpm performer heads from about 1997. Sat on my shelf for years. Had minor port work to them. It opened up the runner cc's to only 175. I picked up almost 5 mph over my ported 113's. I about sh*t. They ain't the best, but decent for sure. 116.50 mph in the 1/4 1st time out.

 

No prob. I DO have a set of phase 6, Bow Tie, heads for the spare engine.

RACE ON!!!

 

so basically i can remove all of my vaccum lines???? How about the fuel vapor canister and all that stuff in the corner? Basically what all can i take off? How about the PCV and the CCV? I know it will give me no performance gain. And my problem with the stumbling was a major vaccum leak. Im gunna look into heads. The thing is i havnt looked into that yet. My machinist will call me in about a week to see all i want on it, if i can get a pair of high flowing heads for a few bucks more, i'll take it. Does anyone have a number for those ford SVOs? thanks for the replies.

Matt