408 Cleveland question - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

70 Mach 1 · 01-20-2007, 13:09

I have a friend that is putting together a new 408 cleveland motor for his drag car. It will be using a set of unported 4v closed chamber heads that he was running on his 357 cu. motor. He has been running port plates from MPG on the intake side and the exhaust side on the little motor. We are trying to decide wether or not to put the plates on the intake side on this bigger motor.

Motor is 13 to 1, solid roller .268 int. .274 ex. @ .050 .734 int. .713 ex., torker 4v intake, and 950hp carb. on alky. We are leaning towards leaving them out for now and if it does not run where we think it should, then putting them back in and test again. What do you guys think?

Chris

unclebill · 01-20-2007, 13:33

Make sure they are "canted valve" heads, get rid of the alcohol and use nitrous. You may get into late 9's if the suspension can work!
10:02 is a mildly worked 302 motor for God's sake.

70 Mach 1 · 01-20-2007, 13:46

Unclebill, this is a bracket car not a heads up car. Would get pretty expensive running nitrous every pass of a bracket race. All cleveland heads are canted valve heads.

But thanks for your input.

Chris

xdclevo · 01-20-2007, 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by unclebill

10:02 is a mildly worked 302 motor for God's sake.

Maybe in a go cart, but not 3660 pound Fords.
And "cantered valves". This is a cleveland forum you know

falcon coupe · 01-20-2007, 20:15

I would leave them in, stock 4v are 270cc filled are around 240cc which is still on the large side for an 408, the engine in this thread :
Dandy engines/CHI 427 XW update
Made 740hp with 427ci and 225cc heads.

70 Mach 1 · 01-21-2007, 06:06

[Maybe in a go cart, but not in 3660 pound Fords.]
LMAO, yeah me and my 393 will just keep struggling to outrun mildly built 302's.
Falcon thanks for your input, my only concern is with the plates in it creates a lip where the intake meets the head.

Chris

falcon coupe · 01-22-2007, 03:03

Fill the intake with Devcon to match, that's what i did.

70 Mach 1 · 01-28-2007, 08:21

Well we fired up the 408 last night and it sounds very good. We decided to leave out the port plates on both the intake and exhaust side to do some baseline testing. We should be at the track next weekend to tune the motor.
Once we get all we can out of this set up we will put the exhaust plates in and try again. Then we will put the intake plates in and test again. This should be a good test to see what the port plates are actually worth. Hopefully we will be able to get this done within the next two weeks. I will be logging weather conditions for each pass to make sure the car picked up or slowed down because of a change we made and not because of the weather.
I will post back as the testing progresses.

Chris

jim1320 · 01-29-2007, 18:25

Good luck weather a little cold here about 30 to 40 day time and down in the 20 at nite. track open in march . Hoping to get my heads Chi 3v back on the car with a new camshaft. Jim

70 Mach 1 · 01-30-2007, 07:17

Thanks Jim, the weather man is showing low 50's for this weekend. If it will hook we should run some good times. We are only expecting to run in the 10.50 range with this motor until he does something with his heads.

Did you have any work done on your heads or are you just changing the camshaft? I am VERY interested in what you run with your set up. I would love to switch to the CHI heads, but do not want to slow down and have to spend another $1000-$1500 on port work just to make them equal what my 4v's are doing.