For a street driven car with an occasional 1/8 mile pass. 3X2 intake, shorty headers, 3.50 gear in a 3400 lb. car. 4 spd wide ratio.
Is the cost of valves possibly seats and the valve job worth it on D2TE heads? Heads already have a new std.valve job.
Werby???
Richard
Well those guys pretty well covered it, better than I could. Blair said it well about the factory valve job. I recently just took a set of bone stock c4ae-g and put a 5-angle valve job on by hand - gained about 10ftlb across the board according to GTECH runs on the street, still the 2.03 x 1.56 stock valves.
In contrast, I had a set of b9ae-b heads (same early casting), 2.09 intakes added but still stock 1.56 exhaust. Whoever did it just did kind of a 1-angle or 2-angle valve job putting the 2.09's in - single 30-degree valve seat, and then things just plunged down into the abyss of the valve bowl. These heads ran SLOWER than a set of stock c4ae-g small valve heads (even BEFORE my fancy valve seat job).
So, "just adding 2.09 valves"? Probably go SLOWER - if anything. All the magic is in the seat/bowl prep as these guys indicated.
Further, it is my and the Gonk's opinion that the weak part of stock FE heads is the exhaust side, not the intake side - so unless you already have 1.66 exhaust's in there (like Ford did on the 406 before the bigger intake) I would not go w bigger intakes.
And if its a small bore (say under 4.08) I wouldn't go bigger valves at all, just get the best finish you can on the 2.03 x 1.56 valves.
I have done BOTH, also by hand with the Neway cutters mainly - 2.09 intakes with 5-angle seat, 1.66 exhaust with 5-angle seat, blended into the bowls, port exhaust roofs. The result feels like a bigger cam - no gain down low, about the same at 3000, then BAM, about a 25hp gain up high at 5000-5500 per GTECH vs the stock c1ae-a or c4ae-g heads. Well worth it but a lot of time and metal chips on the kitchen counter (Werbys Wife is so patient!). Those shiny new aluminum FE heads may be a better way to go than sinking big $$$ or time into the old iron unless class racing demands it.