Quote Originally Posted by gerrybbf View Post
as for my tBird i found some 3.70:1 gears for $224 at summit that with my wiend stealth 8012 intake hooker performance long tube headers, holly carb. The big question: can i port my C8VE-E heads exhaust chambers by them selves for added ponies?
Maybe, maybe not. You have to know what you're doing and where to cut. C8VE's are good flowing heads, but are a small chamber design for making high compression ratio and running on leaded, good quality gasoline like we had in the late 60's. Because they were designed to run on leaded, the valve seats are soft. Running unleaded fuel will result in valve recession down into the head as the seats are eaten away from micro-welding of the valve to the seat. Tetraethyl Lead used to provide an interference to this problem, "dirtying" up the seat so that welding could not take place. I learned this from Uncle Bob Parmenter on this forum.

With the small chambers (compared to the 95cc chambers of D3VE heads), you need a dished piston to get the SCR down to a reasonable level for using unleaded pump gas. Problem is, there are few if any good quality pistons left out there for a 429 that will allow a low SCR with the C8VE heads. Most everything you see nowadays is for a 460 and you will have difficulty finding a piston with a large enough dish using a 460 crank in your block to realize a pump-gas-friendly static compression ratio. You need a 30cc piston, but I don't find any out there that have a compression height (centerline of wrist pin to crown of piston) that will work with a 429 or 460 crank. You can buy a stroker kit that will work, using your block and rods, that includes a 30cc piston with the proper compression height to work with a 4.140" stroke crank. Here's a 501 kit (+0.030" overbore) with a 4.140 crank that results in 9.19:1 static compression ratio with your C8VE heads. See Package A below.....
Stroker Kit 460 Budget 513 533 557 Stroker Kit