yeah, thats crazy, the heads on the 5.0 explorers from 97 and up SUPPOSEDLY have the gt40p heads. its awesome!!
its been some time since i've posted but i've shaved the towers in and the mercury mountaineer manifolds work gr8 not problem clearing the streering box its just a bit of a tight turn off the manifold, hope this was helpfull, Stephen M.
Those cast iron manifolds should also be on 99-01 5.0l Explorers. The welded steel ones are horrible about cracking at the welds
Ok, so I'm a year and a half "late to the party" but you've got a LOT to learn. The Explorer heads are mediocre at best. The best flowing 302 factory heads were the Boss 302 heads (1969 and 1970) You can actually fit TWO explorer sized intake ports into ONE Boss 302 port. And then there's the valve sizes. The Exploder heads are 1.84/1.48 or 1.54 (depending on which head) The Boss 302's had 2.23 intakes (1969) or 2.19 (1970) and 1.72 exhausts. Then there was the 68 302 Tunnel Port heads. These flowed even more than the Boss heads, they flowed so well, the rotating assembly in these engines couldn't handle the rpms necessary to make power the heads were capable of. (7000-and up)