Ford alloy heads

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Ratu
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Ford alloy heads

Post by Ratu »

Any Australians about?

Recently I was visiting some friends and we went to a secondary aluminium smelter (long story). To my great surprise there was a stack of aluminium cylinder heads from Australia of all places. There were Falcon heads in the pile. I found some XE to XF design of alloy heads in there and there were the EA to EL type there as well.

I understand that the XE to XF type were a Honda design or, at the least, Honda had significant involvement with them. The E series heads did not have the Honda input.

Question: Which of the two types had better ports and combustion chambers?
cjperformance
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by cjperformance »

There is a lot , well 4 if memory serves, different chambers in the XD XE XF pushrod alloy 6 head and variance in the OCH heads aswell. The XF unleaded fuel chamber (efi had bigger intake valves)has a very workable chamber with a big pointed peak around the back of the valves, which can allow the chamber to be nicely reshaped. Ports on all of these heads, pushrod and OHC are realistically fairly reasonable for production ports.
The XF ulp for pushrod or for ohc heads in particular the AU head (and matching ohc block) are the pick if starting from scratch and have a few variations in the range of 2 valve per cyl.
Craig.
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by Geoff2 »

I had an XF Falcon six cyl, 4.1 litre. Will be my last Ford. Felt & drove like a truck engine. Once rpms got up to about 4000, engine was so harsh it sounded like it might explode. In contrast, I also had a 1989 Toyota Cressida that had a 3 litre inline six engine, DOHC. It had more power than the Ford engine & was as smooth as silk at higher rpms.

I doubt very much Honda would have involved themselves with that piece of junk. Head gasket failure was also common after many miles because it was a long engine with alum head, iron block. Constant sliding action of the two dissimilar metals heating up/cooling down 'rubbed' the head gasket which eventually wears out.
cjperformance
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by cjperformance »

4000 ! Geoff that harshness was valve float, you were killing it! Haha.
On the efi version they added an alloy valve cover, the noise transmitted/echoed thru it was shocking, on all efi models ford added thick firewall sound deadening to hide the noise!
Honda certainly did help develop the alloy crossflow head. Yes they were a harsh feeling/sounding engine in stock form. Balance was not great and they benefit from being properly balanced and benefit from better pushrods and valve springs. Simply balancing, swaping to VS717 (4v Cleveland- same installed height retainers and locks) valve springs and some better pushrods and a baby mild cam made them so much nicer , but totally agree that the Jap developed engines were so much more refined. Just take the RB30 in the VL Commodore (same are as XF Falcon) , smooth as silk.
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by grandsport51 »

Toyota M series were great running engines ,but major oil leaking pigs!
Maybe they should have contracted with Ford to dry them out!!
Dave B
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Ratu
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by Ratu »

Geoff2

I've had a bit of a chance to find out a bit more about the X-series alloy heads. Honda was very important to their development. In the early years Honda cast and machined them in Japan. Then they were shipped to Australia for fitment to cars. Eventually the tooling was transferred to Australia and the Ford Motor Co of Australia took over full production. The E-series heads were an all Australian affair right from inception.
Ratu
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by Ratu »

cjperformance

Thanks for that.

They are a nice looking casting. The X-series ones are very light in weight. I was impressed by that.

So the unleaded XF are the best of them, in regards to ports and chambers, apart from the AU sohc head?
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by cjperformance »

Ratu wrote: Mon May 21, 2018 4:07 am cjperformance

Thanks for that.

They are a nice looking casting. The X-series ones are very light in weight. I was impressed by that.

So the unleaded XF are the best of them, in regards to ports and chambers, apart from the AU sohc head?
Yes XF ulp head is the best of the pushrod models.
Have you seen the first crossflow head for our ford 6's? Cast iron and weighs a ton!
We also had a "2V" non crossflow head with bigger intake ports and a removable alloy intake which used a 2 barrel stromberg carb.
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cjperformance
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by cjperformance »

Ratu- are you thinking of building one?
Craig.
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by benno318 »

i have done a few mild performance crossflow pushrod heads, some were just "fix this one here up" but i remember years ago with one, the customer had a magic recipe from the internet - find a certain casting number (would D3 be it?? cant remember exactly) use this size valves, this cam, shave to this cc's, etc etc etc - he eventually found one, i THINK it may have been from a 200Ci early engine as i seem to recall there were no injector "cutouts" at all.

anyway he had this recipe to follow, i machined it up for bigger 1.84" inlet valves (again, relying on memory - dont quote me here) nice deshroud top cut, blend into the ports etc. came out nicely, all said and done the customer was happy with the work but i dont think to this day the car has ever made it as far as being registered! the others i did all worked well and used standard sized valves. they can be a very very good towing engine, really torquey down low - and geared accordingly, great on fuel.

i have had a few fords over the years, just as cheap cars, im not a ford man as such - in factory form the leaded 250's go soooo much better than the unleaded versions. factory RATED compression is i think around 9.3:1 on a leaded, and mid 8's on unleaded - however having measured several factory virgin engines, i can confirm the super engines were exactly as rated, the unleaded ones i cc'd were actually high 7's!

had an ohc 3.9 in an 88 NA fairlane, 2.77 and 3 speed b/w auto - it actually hauled ass for a heavy car and would eat holden v8's easily, towed really well but no point revving past 4000 as it was a downward slope from there. the leaded crossflows in XD's and the like made good grunt off idle, and ran out of steam from about 3500. later i bought a $400 5 speed 93 XF panel van, it was sooo gutless it wasnt funny, as in wouldnt maintain 100kmh up a mild slope, so i threw together a spare engine i had using a set of standard 200 pistons (8cc dish instead of 28cc) and that extra compression just transformed it. it was geared at just 1800rpm @ 100kmh so needed torque, the low comp unleaded spec engine simply didnt have enough!!

cant recall 100% but did the last XF heads have the "swirl vane" like the EA heads? i have used cheap EA heads to replace cooked ED's-EF's etc many times and always ground the vane out to replicate the original chamber design of the later heads. the EL at some stage went to 7mm valve stems from 11/32 and carried on with the AU

i think both the crossflow and the OHC 6's were good engines for their day.
Ratu
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by Ratu »

Quoting, "are you thinking of building one?"

Well no. Not at first. I wasn't looking into doing that until I saw these castings. They look pretty reasonable to me. I thought I'd find out some more about them and now the thought to build or modify one is crossing my mind some. Funny how that happens!

Quoting, "Have you seen the first crossflow head for our ford 6's? Cast iron and weighs a ton! We also had a "2V" non crossflow head with bigger intake ports and a removable alloy intake which used a 2 barrel stromberg carb."

No I have not see any of these other heads you mention. The only ones in the stack are all aluminium alloy ones. Good looking castings, I thought.
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by Circlotron »

XD/XE Falcon.
Square cars, round women.
That's how things should be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Falc ... 07-15).jpg
cjperformance
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by cjperformance »

There are some great 4 barrel intakes available for them and of course they respond well to a turbo or some n2o.
The efi models had a removable section, the first part from the head face that contains the injector bosses, which makes custom runner and plenum real simple and then use an aftermarket ecu to control it. I did one years back using a modified EL loom and stock el ecu, this does away with the vane airflow meter and horrid EEC4 ecu the XF used and the stock EL ecu is more tolerant to mild cam choices. Lots if mucking around but if the customer pays why not.
You can buy pistons to run the Aussie 71' on 200ci connecting rods which are .250" longer so you get a shorter lighter piston, great if pushing some rpm. Ford ended up going this way (longer rod) on the AU on sohc and Barra dohc engines.
If you look at building one did you know that the engine block is wider at the deck on all crossflow models?
So you either need an aussie crossflow block or a few machining mods to the pushrod side of the deck on a pre crossflow block, USA blocks included.
Cleveland and most 385 series big block rocker arms are the same as crossflow head rockers, stock installed spring height is Cleveland, lifters are Cleveland/Windsor/385BBF diameter and heights.
Rod bearings are 302 windsor as are rod bolts which must be replaced for performance use.
Craig.
Ratu
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Re: Ford alloy heads

Post by Ratu »

Hey, this is great. Thanks for the information. Who knew there were experts on the Aussie six on ST!

I think I'll have to go through the stack and retrieve some of the better items now. Could end up with a fair bit to take back to the home.
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