Blow By Racing Ford Mustang Ported Heads and Camshaft - Three-Valve Velocity

Remove the chains. You can remove the stock cams at this point to take some weight off the heads, but we just lifted off the head, cam, and exhaust manifold as one assembly.

Despite being cast in aluminum, the heads aren't that light, especially with the cam and manifold attached. Have some help here so that you don't drop the parts on the car or your foot.

We need to remove the stock cam to reuse the stock lifters and cam followers. We'll also reuse the exhaust manifold hardware. Be careful with both the stock cams and the newly installed cams, as they can rotate under the pressure of the valvesprings. You don't want to get your fingers caught.

The CNC Stage 2 heads and Stage 1 cams generated 330 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque to the wheels, as measured on the Dynojet 224 mobile dynamometer. The factory induction was evidently a big restriction after the head and cam swap, as switching to a JLT cold-air intake added 21 hp.

The cylinder walls still looked great, and with the new multilayered head gaskets the factory employs, deck prep is easily accomplished with a razor blade and a Scotch-Brite pad.

Cam sensors must be transferred to the new heads.

The lifters and cam followers are quite small compared to those used in our venerable 5-liter and Windsor pushrod engines. Their diminutive size also help these motors rev faster and higher in the rpm band.

Install the side-specific camshaft and torque down the cam caps in the recommended sequence to 89 in-lb. The cams are different lengths to allow both chains to fit.

We bolted the exhaust manifold onto the new head/cam combo and installed the assembly as one piece. There's plenty of room in the engine bay to do it, and it's far easier to bolt on the manifold when it's on the bench. We used Fel-Pro's 9790 PT-2 and 9792 PT-2 MLS head gaskets and new torque-to-yield head bolts from Ford. The bolts were torqued to 30 ft-lb in sequence. This was followed by a 90-degree turn in sequence and then another 90 in sequence.

Blow-By Racing offers cam and timing covers with a powdercoated finish ($295 for all three pieces). Our set had the new silver vein finish. We swapped over the idler pulleys from the original cover and installed the rubber seal along with a couple dabs of silicone where the heads meet the block.

Chain alignment comes by way of lining up the bronze links with the marks on the cam and crank sprockets. On '05 models, these are indicated as a dash for the passenger side and an L for the driver side.

In 2006, Ford marked the cam sprockets with an L and an R.