how hard is it to swap heads while the motor is in the car. and what kind of gains from a port and polish

 

You will see a substantial difference from new heads.

The entire job should take about 10-20 man hours depending on how fast you are.

I did it in about 6 hours with a friend helping me and about 18 hours by myself. Just take your time and label everything.

 

i am going to get stock heads again for about 300 dolars and get the ported and poliched what kind of gains from them. and so it is possible to change them in the car then without to much hassle

 

It didn't look like it would be to hard to change the heads while in the car ... i was going to but i needed new rings and bearings so it was out with the engine. I personally would recommend taking the engine out and getting it good and clean. Doesn't take to much longer but makes a rebuild too tempting.

 

300 is too much for a set of used bare heads.. there is a head shop here who sold it for 200, and a fbody junkyard for 250... 300 is way too high

 

Well, I did the heads/cam at the same time; it took me 8 solid days to do it by myself. The gains you'll get from ported stock heads are only going to be as good as the port job itself, so it depends on who is doing the job.

 

the heads are easy to pull off while they're still in the car. i just changed both head gaskets and got a valve job....theres no way it takes 20 hours. the most time consuming part was taking the bolts out. if you have longs tubes, it'll be a little harder. i installed my lt's while the heads were off the car, making it a lot easier.

 

*Thread Hijack*
So, once the heads are off what does it take to change out the lifters and rods?

 

Rods should be out when head are out, as for the lifters....3 bolts.

 

if you mean pushrods, you pull them straight out once the rockers are taken out. make sure you keep them in order. the lifters have a plate holding them down that can be taken off with 3 10mm bolts(i think), the lifters should pull right out, but you might have to twist them a little.

make sure you remember which end of the lifter goes where....then stick them in a bucket of oil overnight to clean them.

if you know how to install rockers youll be fine

 

thanks for the advice the reason i am not pulling the engine though is because it is only about 1500 miles old. the reason for used remachined heads is 3 bolt wholes in my heads where the headers screws in at are stripped out. and cant get a good seal leaks like crazy and dont have enough for new heads and a tune

 

you should pull the heads, take them to a machine shop and get a 3 angle valve job...i think they charge around $10 a bolt to extract them, and about 15 if they have to helicoil them