(EDIT: Removed excessively negative comment)
I'm putting my engine together tomorrow -- a dual-quad tunnel rammed '86 H.O. -- and I should have it alive by the end of the weekend, so I'll tell you on Sunday how porting the hell out of the heads works. It oughta go like the proverbial raped ape.
I ported my '86 heads clear out to match my headers and gasket-matched the intake with my 289 tunnel-ram intake. I'll be running it with a custom cam with a longer intake duration (so as to come alive right where the secondaries start pulling on the tunnel ram), keeping the original .444 lift. (Safety first!)
The factory heads on the '86 are poorly designed but the '86 only makes 25 HP less than the '87, and I've read that most of that is from the exhausts, which makes sense because the exhaust ports are about the size of peanut shells and have that stupid nub in them, to boot. Porting your heads well should make a huge difference. Plus, the '86 heads have the shallowest torque curve of any of the stock heads, and torque, of course, is what you should be concerned about. I'm eager to see how mine runs.
Of course, this is all academic until I turn the key this weekend. I could be sorely misguided, here; but then, I am doing this myself. I'll keep you posted.
