Reply to "COBRA JET: Unleashing The Performance Capabilities Of 351 Cleveland Engines With Open Chamber 4V Heads (Q Code)"

I’ve really enjoyed reading all the various guides on this forum, particularly George’s, but this one has me intrigued.

I’m restoring an ‘70 Mach 1 Mustang, (sorry Pantera people, maybe one of your sexy roadsters will be my next project) which somewhere along the way had it’s 2v 351w swapped out for a 2v 72/73 Cleveland (D2AE-CA), as I’m in the U.K. I decided to just roll with this and rebuild it myself to something a little more fun.
I’ve just stripped off it’s 2bbl Manifold and heads, (gasket failure and a little surface rust found in 2 bores, but never been rebored previously so lucky in that respect).

I’m leaning towards the standard stroke variant, as I have a 4mab crank with a touch of orange paint and the Brinell testing mark on the 1st counterweight and quite like the idea of keeping and using this strong old devil to help keep to a healthy budget.
With the help of EBay I’ve picked up a set of the 73 4v heads which i’ll Be shipping to the U.K. along with a few other bits as soon as I have them all together.

I’m thinking of going with the factory cast iron manifold and grinding out the bores, and I need to get a new transmission (thinking 4 speed Toploader) as the one I got with the car went walkies somewhere between the port and arriving with me.

I’ll be hooking it up with a Holley 3310-4 that I plan on converting to a 4150 to provide the high airflow numbers.

I’m quite curious about the cam’s though as that’s a lot of choice there, George would your custom cam complement a cast iron manifold set up or would it be somewhat limited without the improvement provided by the Blue Thunder?