So should I just mill 'em and slap 'em on? should I have them worked over mildly? should I have more extensive work done to them?? What head gaskets? My plans for this motor when it finally says bye bye, is to bore it out to stock LS1 size, do some forged rods/pistons and keep these heads and probably cam too... or go a shade bigger on the cam, but nothing over 230* dur/ .600 lift....

Whaddya think?? are the pushrods gonna be a bitch to get right after milling the heads?

 

Mill them and roll with it until you up the cubes. Your pushrods should still be good, but you have a PR length checker anyway right?

Mine (7.4s) were still good when I did the math for my heads.

 

I have a checker at the shop... its a nice one too LOL and I dont think anyone's ever used it. I'm going to have to mill them like .030 to get back to the stock 5.3 chamber size, then gain some compression on top of that. I want to be a little over 10:1 somewhere around 10.5:1. I would think that would require some different pushrods.

 

 

why's that?? you'd go bigger?? keep the same one?? the one I have now is 224/227 .576/.588 113+3 it loves the bottle.... if I did another one it'd be a custom grind somewhere in the neighborhood of 227/230 .590/.595 111


I think it would work nicely with those heads and a little over 10:1 compression...

 

nobody else???

slow- opinions on the cam choice?

 

Ben, up the cubes before you up your cam. The cam you have works well with your bolt-on +cam only 5.3.

 

thats how I'm gonna do it, but eventually the bumpy stick will be changed too... I'm sure the one in there now will run really nice with more compression and 346 cubes

 

I think that cam works really well with your setup. Just looking at the fastest 5.3Ls, it seems the smaller cams get the job done.

 

I wouldnt put them on till you do the 346, chances are when the 5.3 meets its demise it will be due to detonation and send piston chunks flying at your heads therefore screwing them up. I like your cam choice for the 346 but with a wider lobe seperation due to running nitrous on it. The wider lobe seperation will give you higher cylinder pressures which equals mopowa. Also another reason to wait on putting the heads on is because you are goign to have to mill them like .06 to realize any decent compression gain and at that point you are tlaking getting the intake side milled and possibly piston to valve clearance problems although I doubt it since the 5.3 pistons are dished. I wouldnt want to hack up a set of heads that much and possibly chance destroying them when the 5.3 gives up the ghost.