289 Heads With Chevy Valves

I ran mine with standard ford hardened rods on a fairly large cam. Had stronger triple springs if memory serves.

Very interesting - I thought my setup was unique.

staygoing said:

Thanks, Rod. Sorry to step into your territory! With a stock cam do you think I will realize a noticeable power increase?

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Not so much with a stock cam IMO. Without something to get those valves open wide and longer you won't see the full benefit. The other MUST to really get your money's worth is to upgrade your intake. I ended up swapping out my dual plane manifold for a single plane Torker intake with 650 Holley DP and it really pulled hard. Big valves need to be fed. Having had several 302s that setup was much closer than you would imagine.

Of course, with a big cam and single plane manifold you can imagine my low end sucked so gears and a converter solved that. It also ran hot so I made sure I had a 4 core radiator to keep it cool.

Naturally, the weak link on the old 289s were the rods. Don't start pushing it without changing those or you will be sweeping it up.

Sounded like you were looking to keep things mild but you know - Once you change one thing .....

Dirty Rod said:

I ran mine with standard ford hardened rods on a fairly large cam. Had stronger triple springs if memory serves.

Very interesting - I thought my setup was unique.

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yeah not really. back in the day it was rather common to use chevy valves in ford heads to get a bigger valve, though usually the exhaust valve was a 1.50".

OP you can use those heads with your stock pushrods and your stock cam. that said, i would upgrade the cam to something bigger, perhaps a comp cams 280 magnum cam.