Dove Heads vs Edelbrock for 390 build

[Sizzler]

You seem concerned about the Edelbrocks' flow characteristics out of the box. Most people seem happy with them. Minor port matching seems to be a common thing. You could send them to Kuntz and have them do a full-on $4,500 port job, but otherwise, they seem ok, out of the box.

You talk about getting a custom Hydraulic roller cam ground.
If you're doing hydraulic roller lifters, 6500 will be your absolute redline, don't even think you're going to 7000. If you go that route, and for a street engine I don't think it's a bad route, you should buy bare Edelbrock heads and do the spring, valve and retainer selections yourself. Do spring cups. I'd do titanium valves and retainers. Hollow push rods if you can. Anything to reduce the weight of the valve train. Hydraulic roller lifters for the FE are heavy. As for the big valves, with a .030 over 390 bore, you could possibly get into shrouding issues so I'd just stick with the given sizes.

The big thing with Edelbrock heads is drainback holes, getting the proper tin drainback covers (not all versions fit, long-fingered ones are best), spring cups, and I had some steel inserts put in over the head bolt holes to give a good purchase for the head bolts and get a good torque reading with. Otherwise, the whole point of them is good flow, they're based on medium riser heads though the valves are spaced differently (and better).

As for issues with Eagle rods, it's the fit yes, but it's also the bolts that come with them. Little known is that you can 'upgrade' the bolts through Eagle, but they're pricey. When you come right down to it though, the stock FE rods are fine, even for hot street use. Just recondition them carefully, spot-face them and use some good bolts.

As for throwing the weight of a rod 'off', they usually can be made to match by judicious milling in other areas of the rods, in fact they usually come with an extra pad of metal cast on that's there for this reason.

Finally, I haven't seen one bad thing said about Dove products in this thread. I suggest you search on 'Dove' in other threads.