Hello guys, what is a good combo for my 95 5.0 liter when it comes to lifters and cams. I am thinking about changing my cam, but while I am there I wanto to do something to the heads as well? any advice is much appreciated.
You won't see a ton of improvement on a stock engine with a cam swap, but that's not to say none will be had. If you're talking about doing some port work to the heads, you should look into either porting your current intake, or replacing it with a higher flowing piece (recommended). There's a guy who posts up on the 5.0 Tech side of this site named Thumper460 who sells ported E7 heads, and I know there's several members running them who are satisfied with the performance gains they saw. Do some searching around and maybe take a look at their combinations for some ideas on where to get started. I really can't recommend a cam because of not knowing what type of performance you're looking for, but keep in mind that the factory heads are known to suffer on the exhaust side, so a split pattern cam that favors the exhaust will probably net you better performance than say a B303 or E303 cam (or the like) will.
If you have the stock heads, the Comp 270HR10 is a good stock replacement cam if you can tune it in. Otherwise you need something with a lobe center 112 or more. Once you upgrade the heads, it won't quite do it anymore. You will need to go with 1.6 pedestal rocker with that cam and you will already be pretty much maxing out the valve springs with that lift.
I am looking to gain some good amount of horse power, I don't want to go with stock stuff. I am willing to purchase new heads if that's the case or probably build my heads with some performance parts.
If building a decent amount of power is in the plans, but the funding isn't, you really can't go wrong with a set of regular GT40 or GT40P heads. Both are tons better than the E7 heads, and the standard GT40 can be found fairly cheaply if you're willing to possibly pull them yourself. Everyone seems to flock to the mid-97+ Explorers pretty quickly, so finding some P heads before someone else can be rare, but finding the standards which are the same as the 93-95 Cobra heads should be fairly easy. I took a quick look in the Corral classifieds and found these deals, if you may be interested: Iron GT40 heads $375 Twisted Wedge heads, pushrods, 1.7rr $600