e303, sniper, afr heads

keegan.martin said:

Holley sniper for tuning made sense because it has a basic set up start up tune and then I can fine tune, also with the 94 computer it’s hard to tune anyway so why not rip it out and use a holley top of the line, the intake I know a guy selling it to me and did my research and it isn’t to bad and i can get a good deal on them, the heads i changed my mind and just going with gt40 for two reasons. the deck on the afr heads are half inch and i read somewhere they tend to overheat or blow head gaskets and i do not feel like ripping apart a motor the second would be money the gt40 would be much less. the cam everyone loves a e303 and a tfs stage one, I am leaning more to a tfs because better power range and also people sometimes have problems with the e303 idle so yes method to the maddens

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Mike has some pretty solid advice and is on par. Although 1/2" deck is pretty thin, the standard for an aftermarket aluminum head is 3/4" deck. That being said, I have absolutely never heard of someone having trouble with AFR heads blowing head gaskets. They are pretty well respected throughout the industry. I have all the specs on the Cobra 302 we did, and it put 302hp to the tire with GT40x (aluminum) heads. If you are interested. I like the G40x heads, because it's a Ford part, and it bolts up perfectly. Mike's right about the cam, nobody likes an 'E' cam anymore. The alphabet soup cams are all outdated, they don't perform very well, and they are actually harder to tune. The 'F' cam is a little better, but there are still way better cams out there. Piston to valve clearance is going to be something you have to consider.

I will contend that finding people who can tune these old OBD1 cars is getting a lot harder. The self learning on the Holley is really cool. However, that's a crap ton of work to get them working, plus all the nightmares of rewiring the car. If you don't know anyone that can tune an OBD1 car close to you, then I think the DIYauto box, or the PIMPXS is a better option. It plugs right into the factory harness, and is easy to tune. That being said, I am running darn close to 600hp with a stock computer with a mail in piggy bag chip on it. It's do able.

I'm definitely not going to recommend anything that has a carb style, or throttle body style intake. You should be fine with a factory bolt on style intake, like a Cobra, or a Trick Flow. Now, with all that being said, Trick Flow and Anderson Motorsports offer complete HCI packages. There's no guess work. You are going to have a tested package at a better price without having to worry about piston to valve clearance. There isn't much justification for working out your own combo these days.

Kurt