291c head rebuilding

My .02 worth is to sell or pitch the 50 year old heads and just get Eddy aluminums

It really boils down to what you want. If you want iron heads then it's worth having John, Jcworthy here on the forum do your heads. You will have some money in doing them, but the engine will look stock from the outside. Now if you really want a lot better head from the start and don't care that the engine does not look stock then by all means Edelbrock's would be the way to go. Just note that it might be a year before Edelbrock has any heads for sale, so this might be an issue if you're in a hurry. If you have John do your heads you'll be able to make some great power and no one except yourself will know what you have. If you buy Edelbrock's next year then everyone will know. Personally it's fun to have a sleeper engine and let everyone wonder why it runs so well.

WesternRed wrote: I've done exactly that with my 343, took the Eddy heads off and replaced them with ported 291C heads. I did this for 2 reasons, one is that I will use the Eddy heads on my race car once I port them and second, I wanted it to look more factory/period correct. The 291C heads should be much better than the correct square port heads for this motor, but nobody will notice, so I'm cheating anyway. I've also ditched the Air Gap intake for a R4B and got rid of the large cap HEI distributor. I am still running the same hydraulic roller cam as before, so obviously I had to get the valve guide bosses cut down for positive seals, which also allowed room to run double valve springs. I want to get it on the dyno at some stage to see how my home ported heads and intake change compare to the out of the box Eddies that were on there before.

Notice any big change by taking off the Air Gap other than it runs better just after firing it up?

Heavy 488 wrote: My .02 worth is to sell or pitch the 50 year old heads and just get Eddy aluminums

x2