His words......not my idea. On the flip side........there is something deeply (and deviously) satisfying about outrunning someone's "badass aluminum-headed killer" with what appears to be a mildly modified set of early 289 castings. The last set of these I did had over 200 hours of porting and about 200 hours of machining/trickery. Factory appearing on the outside...........stuffed full of titanium NASCAR cut down valves, bronze bushed pushrod holes, epoxied runners, lightweight beehive springs, titanium retainers, raised height chrome moly keepers, and a trick shaft rocker setup with 1.75 ratio arms. I can remember my oldest kid asking me why I was going to all that work on a set of early 289 heads........I told him, "I feel like showing off sometimes."
And after all that work, how many sets of aftermarket heads could you have bought ? Back when Ford decided to do the development work for the iron GT40 heads in the late 80's, they first found a set of original 1968 GT40 heads to use as a baseline, from there they sent a set of E7 castings to Roush to rework and used the 68 flow data as a target. The Roush modified E7's flowed better than the 68 GT40 heads. From there, they went forward with the production GT40 heads. Now at this point in time, these heads are considered "ho-hum" and sell for a couple hundred dollars.
