[PatBurke]

Ford Racer,
I think it's all relative to what the intended use will be. There is no doubt that the Dove cylinder heads have been inconsistent when it comes to casting integrity and machining quality but they do make some unique parts that give you the "opportunity" to make killer HP in a race application. In my dealings with Dove they are a company with lot's of good ideas but sometimes poor execution. We are making 850+ HP with our Dove headed, naturally aspirated race engine in our '66 Fairlane drag car with only 434 cubes. That works out to around 1.96+ HP per cube. You need a pretty effecient cylinder head to do that. BUT it took a LOTS of work, LOTS of trial and error, and a few buck$ to solve all the problems we found along the way. I will say that I've never had a set of Dove heads that we could'nt work with, it's just a matter of how much effort you want to put into working on them.

With that said, for the typical Cobra engine or street type FE, I think that you can't go wrong with the Edelbrock cylinder heads. They produce a very good casting with plenty of material, are pretty inexpensive, and are capable of plenty of HP. We buy the Edelbrock 6008 bare 427 castings and set them up according to the application for most of our customers. We are doing a pretty intense ALL ALUMINUM engine for a guy right now with these heads, Shelby block, 4.25" billet crank, Oliver billet rods, hydraulic roller cam, TWM injection set up, Electromotive ECU and distributorless ignition, etc. It's going in front of a T-56 in a Kirkham aluminum bodied car.

Your goal of 475+ HP from a 428 with Edelbrock heads is very do-able. It'll should actually make more power than that. A while back we built a pretty basic +.020" 427 with stock cast iron small port MR heads, 10.5 to 1 compression, 3.78" steel crank, Lemans rods, Dove rockers, roller cam, Blue Thunder dual plane single 4 intake, BG 750 carb, etc. and that dynoed at 525 HP @ 6400 and 510 ft lb @ 6100. We updated that same engine later to use in a drag car with 13.5 to 1 compression, ported Edelbrocks, bigger roller cam, Eagle rods, and a tunnelwedge w/ two 750's and it made 670HP. Not that this is a direct back to back comparison but it shows that the Edelbrocks can support plenty of power.

Give us a call if you have any questions or there is anything we can do to help.

Thanks,
Pat Burke
Ocean State Performance
(401) 737-1495