Reply to "Need a comparison between the C302b heads and Roush intake vs the Edelbrock aluminum heads and RPM Air Gap intake"

The number 4 primary (rear passenger side) is the closest to the tank. I’m 9.5” deck and the 2” diameter primary touched the tank. It's hard for that diameter pipe to make the turn quickly enough and even so, why fit a high port head and then run the port into a short radius?

As far as vendors, my experience was 10 years ago but I tried three different sets that were represented to be for my combo and ended up sending them all back and making my own. They were all coated so reworking them would have been a mess and I figured if I was going to have to do that kind of surgery I may as well start from scratch instead of a custom header price. The vendors were all apologetic and cool about it. It’s tough to accommodate bolt on parts for custom combos.

Besides the interference with primary and tank, the position of the collector on the header is important in order to run the tail pipe through the suspension with clearance at the extreme of control arm travel. It’s surprisingly tight and all of the collectors on the units I tried were suboptimal and compromised to quickly transition to 2 ½” tail pipe. IIRC, the passenger side is the most problematic. The last set I had would have worked except the tri-lobe flange on the collector was clocked in a manner that made it hit the shock. The Driver’s side primaries come very close or hit the gas tank heat shield but this is very common even on the popular GTS 4V headers. You may have better luck since you’re 9.2 deck but besides the different flange pattern on C302B vs 4V the ports are significantly raised (about 1 ¼” higher) so trying to rework a set of 4V headers with a new flange won’t work for the above reasons.

IMO C302Bs are great heads; tried and true, can support a lot of power and at this state of tune really don’t give up anything to the 25yr plus newer contemporary aftermarket heads unless you’re a pro but they are a fair amount of work to get them adapted and packaged properly for the Pantera thus my earlier comment that unless you're going to use them in a combo that can use their power potential it may not be worth it.

Are you stock displacement or stroked?

Best,
Kelly