I've met the OP a couple of times and if I remember correctly he teaches shop class at a high school in southern oregon. I think they are doing a BB A body car as a shop project.

That is one incredible gesture.
Very cool of you , Sir.

Back to the stock vs. super stock debate...........stock = unported.
Super stock = stock port volume.
But some of the lengths I have seen done to make a legal port are nothing short of astounding.
8 k for a set of heads is entry level.
re-locating lobes on the cam ( and subsequent moving of lifter bores ) to address push rod angle and port location is the deep end of that particular pool.

I gotta start this response out with "Your results may vary!"

I made two major changes to my Challenger "waaaaay back when" not too long after I bought it in the mid-90s:
- I swapped a set of stock rebuilt 906s for a set of 452s that had 2.14"/1.81" valves and a LOT of hours of my time porting them in a really cold detached garage over the winter; IIRC, the 452s had slightly smaller chambers that bumped the CR from about 9:1 to 9.5, too
- The same time I swapped the heads, I also replaced the stamped MP "heavy duty" 1.5 rocker arms with a set of Crane iron 1.6s

First time back at the track with the heads & rocker changes, the car picked up 6 MPH and dropped over 1/2 second in ET.

Oh, and it still had the little MP 272 (222* at .050") / .455" hydraulic cam in it.

The OP has been here before talking about the car and the class.

He needs some pistons!

If Todd confirms that its a vocational project, I'll throw in another $50 for the kids.

Like rb446 said.. a rebuilt double pumper will do more for the "seat of the pants" dyno than almost anything. Trust me I dumped a bunch of money into my old 3310 before stepping up to my 850 double pumper.. bolted on the 850.. felt like I picked up 30hp right off the bat. Truly awesome ! .. those heads are capable of handling much more cam without porting. That cam will hold back your porting gains. More cam and carb will do more for that good intake and exhaust without grinding away on a chunk of cast iron for 40 hrs !! I understand the time vs. money arguement.. but beg ,borrow or steal a double pumper !! You won't regret it. Lol.

40hrs?

We’re talking a mild bowl port job here...... more like 4hrs......... and very worthwhile for a school class project imo.

Interestingly enough, there’s a current thread going on right now over on speedtalk where they tested some unported oe heads against a couple sets of ported versions of the same oe heads on a pump gas(87 octane) 302 Ford with a really small hyd cam.

One set made 50hp more than the unported heads, the other set made 70hp more.

It's me, Rob the shop teacher. Been here for 23 years. Many here have all offered to help in the fall. Here is the deal, and I like this to be very clear. My car, my money kids do the work at school. I do some work as well as it is kinda "technical". I've done this many times. We like building things and I have many kids in the room multiple times a day.

I am personally convicted that people learn better by doing big picture work rather than tidy little "canned" activities.

We started with a 67 Bronco. It does not look that bad in the pics, but they have a lot of little cracks and crevices to hold rust in. It was supposed to be a "crusty" crawler. I installed a non-traditional powertrain etc. as it was an off road toy. Pretty rough. 2 straight years, lots of money and we are down to about a month and it should be done.

I am not interested in doing any more repaint / total frame off restorations. Everything down to the insides of the tailgate were taken apart and redone.

Not perfect, but it would have been cut up for parts 10 years ago. I will see if I can get some pics out.

Trying to resize the pics....

Well there it is. The pic did resize...



Rob

This pic does not do it justice. We cut the whole front end off including the frame. Made an entire new clip. New floors, bent the cage etc. Made our own fuel tank etc. It is substantially different than stock.

Anyways.. off to bed.

Talk about massive thread jack LOL.

Nice work fun project!

Porting iron heads can be fun and rewarding. I would only do a set that have healthy guides and valves-seats and such so minimum money will be invested.(Duh right?) I have done a set of 360 J heads Im quite proud of. I have no flow numbers but I had the time the tools and motivation. Im no Steve Dulcich- his J heads showed MAJOR improvement over stock. Practicing caution My goal was not to make things 351 Cleveland 4bbl bigger but to blend and remove lumps slag and feather seams. Just by doing this actually enlarges things noticeably. It was fun and I have no worries about ruining flow as some home port jobs do. I left what the factory designed just smoothed it all out very nicely. I removed just a little from the pushrod pinch. Gasket matched intake ports and bowls and left them rough from cartridge rolls. Int and Exh valve guides were rounded and tear dropped at their square edges-. Nothing like what Mr Dulcich or other pros do ( he knows how much is safe to remove) as he removed a lot of structural mass. Chambers have a nice mild polish as do the exh bowls and ports. It was quite fun although Id only do this for myself as it took many many hours and the rotary tool numbs my hands.

I missed the part about it being a school project. A class on porting techniques I would be interested in attending myself.

I was just replying to the question of, in my opinion "is it worth the time/investment to port a set of cast iron 452 heads?" I was just trying to offer some alternative suggestions that would
increase HP in the simpler form of bolt ons.

As an educational experience, the porting techniques learned first hand would definitely be valueable.

If you port and polish your heads yourself, its just time and little money. The issue is the condition of the seats and guides. If you have to send them off to a machine shop for that work, you may save money by buying a new set of heads. I used to port a lot od 906 and 452 heads for people, seldom get asked anymore, cheaper to buy a cheap set of new heads. But yes porting those head are well worth the effort as far as performance of your project is concerned.

Now if you don't take the offer of a pair of heads for 650, and you should, I had made an offer in the past of used 2.14 and 1.81 SS mopar valves with keepers and retainers. This with porting your 452 heads and cutting to 80 cc to raise compression would the thing to do. Let me know my offer is still good for the parts.

it's not cheaper to buy new alum heads than to replace the guides, valve job and even new valves on iron heads. I've been thru this. as far as $650 for new sidewinders, that's great! but, what average guy gets any offer even close to that. give a $1000 for stealths and then blow another $500 to fix them. alum heads aren't a money saver on a project like this.

if it were me i'd put the extra money that would be spent on alum heads (the sidewinder deal excluded) in pistons.

It sounds like it is definitely worth the effort to work them over with a grinder. My issue is I mainly want the car to be operational this year and able to legally make a dragstrip pass.

This is far...far.... from ideal. I know 10:1 compression and some good heads would likely get me faster than I am intending to go right now.

It isn't that I don't want to do that. It is more that I want to get it going initially. We can always go through the engine again. I have another 440 on hand to do just that.

The car is a rolling shell. I have a donor 71 440 Duster to donate the mechanicals etc.

When your teaching it becomes a process thing. So if this were a personal project, I would take three years and 10K and do the whole thing. This is a multi-step job.

Here's another thread on 76 440 pistons
https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/468549.html

Ok thank you. I will look that over later today. The students are here...