d8 swap the lazy way lol

So my engine blew a head gasket. it ended up warping the head and i took it to carquest to be milled. they ended up shaving off so much that the valves were hanging open. so I junked the head and went to the junkyard. ended up pulling a 80 mustang D8 with push rods. being as wary as i was about milling decied to ignore the posts about low compression and just bolted everything together at stock hight using a felpro gasket. Well then i figured out the intake hole on the d8 is bigger. not wanting to mess with swapping to another carburator being as i would then have to change ignition system too. so I thought about it and figured out that if I were to slot an ear on the 1100 it would work as long as i used a washer. i used an egr spacer from a 250 and took off the air pump thingy and was left with the two egr holes i plugged those and used the bolt holes for the air module to mount my linkage. its been three months and the engine runs great i use 87 sometimes 89 octaine and its great. other then choke problems wich i remedied with a choke cable

Stragely my compression is fine even without milling the head or decking the block

pepsipunk":2wg39zbj said:

Stragely my compression is fine even without milling the head or decking the block

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Really? How do you know how fine the compression is? If compression is low there won't be any obvious problems, not like too high compression. It'll run, sure, but it will not be optimal for N/A running. You could probably run 83 octane with no ping. Maybe 7.5:1 compression ratio, perfect for forced induction though....

How much did they mill off the other head?

pepsipunk":318qx88j said:

..i took it to carquest to be milled. they ended up shaving off so much that the valves were hanging open...

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At what point were they hanging open? Meaning, when you bolted the old head back on, the valves wouldn't close all the way once the rocker arm assembly was bolted down? That means that you should have shimmed the assembly up the width that the head was milled. That would have corrected your problem.

However, the later head had larger valves and a bigger intake. The better breathing head (even though you have the smaller carb) makes up for the lack of compression that you probably created.

If you have no problems with it, then give yourself a great big pat-on-the-back for a job well done

I'm in kind of a similar situation. The person I got my large log head from only milled it a little bit to keep compression low for turbo. I put it on thinking I'd go that route too, but then decided not to. It runs perfectly fine as is, but I have the constant nagging thought of how much power am I missing out on? If it's just a couple % hp, it wouldn't be that noticeable... but who knows.

Anyway, I've been thinking about just swapping the gasket for a steel shim which would raise compression a bit and see if I feel the difference before doing anything drastic to the head. You could always try that.

I'm in kind of a similar situation. The person I got my large log head from only milled it a little bit to keep compression low for turbo. I put it on thinking I'd go that route too, but then decided not to. It runs perfectly fine as is, but I have the constant nagging thought of how much power am I missing out on? If it's just a couple % hp, it wouldn't be that noticeable... but who knows.

Anyway, I've been thinking about just swapping the gasket for a steel shim which would raise compression a bit and see if I feel the difference before doing anything drastic to the head. You could always try that.