New to v8's, help me with my combo....

302Xr4ti

New Member
Mar 15, 2010
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Ok, so I'm new to 302 and v8's(been a 2.3T guy for years). The motor I believe was pulled out of an 84 or so T-bird. When I bought the car, I was told it was bored 30 over, mild cam installed and it had a bad Edelbrock 600 4-barrel and crappy e6se heads.

So far the parts I've acquired mostly through trades are:
-Edelbrock Performer heads
-Ford Motorsport 1.7 ratio roller rockers
-Matched hardened push rods
-BBk shorty headers
-Summit universal x-pipe kit and 2.5" pipes all the way out
-Weiand Stealth intake

The motor has Ford Motorsports aluminum valve covers and I have a guy wanting to trade me a good Edelbrock marine 600 4-barrel carb and "Powered by Ford" valve covers for the Motorsport covers. If the "Powered by Ford" valve covers will clear the rocker arms(have no clue if they will), I think I will do this trade, otherwise I'm thinking on a Holley 650 double pumper.

Other than that, what other things should I look at? I'm assuming this motor is a hydraulic flat tappet setup and I'm not sure what all is involved with a cam swap with that. I don't have the money set aside to do a roller conversion, but I was thinking of keeping this "unknown" cam for now and using the 1.7's to give it a little better effective lift to keep things flowing better though I'm not sure if I should just go ahead and do a cam swap. Any thoughts on that?

Right now the ignition is just the stock "duraspark", should I really look at upgrading the ignition system or is the money I would spend on that better invested elsewhere? I know with most Ford motors, the base timing for ignition is 10*, I'm assuming it would probably be the same for the carb motor, no?

And lastly, any ideas on some numbers I might expect? I'm hoping for around 300-350whp though I have no idea what expect honestly. Thanks for helping a newbie out!

Jason
 
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Well, I went ahead and did the trade for the carb and purchased a Morosso low profile filter assembly. Only thing left to do now really is put it all together and get the carb tuned in I suppose.

On the Edelbrock Performer heads, any idea if I'll need 90* spark plug boots to clear the bbk unequal shorty?