I have a 438 as well. I used box stock edelbrock heads. cam was comp's XE275HL, which was .525 lift, and (going from memory) around 230° @ .050" valve lift with the 1.5 ratio rocker arms.

engine made 535 tq and 505 hp on an engine dyno.


if I had it to do over again, I would seriously consider the stealths with a port job and set up by a pro. by the time you do that, you'll be a few hundred more than the box stock edelbrocks, but you'll have a MUCH better end product. when I did mine 6 years ago, my machine shop said that Edelbrock had fixed their quality control issues, and the heads were good to go out of the box now, that they've checked many of them over and haven't found any problems.

however, just last winter I put together a 5.9 magnum with magnum RPM heads, and one of the intake valves had such a poor valve job, I could see daylight through it and it had to go in for a correction valve job, so even "made in the US quality" isn't all that great, and needs to be checked over as well.