I was aware of the early four bolt 63 Fairlane, but its sort of like the early L code 1968 250 Mustang and late 1967 and 1968 250 Ford Tornio/Fairlane/Ranchero engine option...technically on the options list, but hard to find.
1965Pony":1bypqyu9 said:
Ahh .. That's great news guys. I'll pull of that Big bell head and swap the 65' head on it. That will give me a bit more performance correct? Or will the flow benefits be better than the compression benefits of the big bell head? .
No, I'd slap on an EO, E1, or whatever late model big bell head first, always, even if I lost compression. For 30 bucks, you could plane the head 60 thou, slap on some new valve seals, head lap and reseat the valves, and just add 60 thou flat washers and get another 16 hp with out any problems. A C3 head is just plain nasty for air flow, like trying to run an UPS van body in NASCAR..
The earlier C3 head will loose about 10 hp for the reduced head flow on a 1981 E0BE-6090-BB head, but you might gain about 6 hp from a compression ratio rise. I pulled my 1981 head (same as big bell 200 head) and put the early head in, but I had to make a carb adaptor, special vacccum port take off from a 1972 XA Falcon, and swap out the adjustable rocker gear and use the later rocker cover to run it. Early rocker covers don't have provisions for PCV and are a different shape.
Any C3 head should just be looked at only as a viable spare part for an early pre emissions 1060-1965 Ford six...its inferior to all D3 to E0 heads in flow, valve seat durability, valve materials but often has small chambers which can boost compression ratio. It has nothing to recommend to it except for compression ratio and probably its ability to adapt to cheap spare parts that might be laying around (Old Offenhasuer or Edelbrock intakes, for instance). It often comes with adjustable rockers, which might be helpfull, but in my case, it wasn't.
If you put a C3 head on a 1965 ot 1966 Mustang 200, you'll probably get no change in perfromance over the stock head.
The early heads have awfull cfm flow rates, but quite small chambers. Mine was 54 cc, but 52 cc is typical. On the later heads, 62 cc chamber is common.
My 1981 runs fine on thew poorer flowing C1 cylinder head, but its looses 10 hp from the poor head flow, and gains 6 hp from the higer compression.