[ecp]

The decks were thin and Ford did put a small bridge across the long water passage at the ends of the alum MR heads to help reinforce it (marginal fix). Ford documents also show a revised torque procedure was required to avoid cracking the alum heads. The real improvement came with the tunnel port engines which were mostly dry deck, so they were stiffer around the cylinders without the deck water passage holes. A guy in Mass is running these with four (4) holley 4 barrels, twin Paxton superchargers and nitrous even (almost 900 HP w/o the nitrous) and the TP heads are doing fine. You are probably right with regard to the new heads being better for extensive modifications - as you saw one of the previous responses, someone sank alot of $ into the new heads and got them to flow decent......the big desireable aspect of the original heads, of course, is that they are original (for the select group of individuals that appreciate it). I put the graph up as I just thought some people would be interested in subjective info, as opposed to hearing hype from those trying to promote the products