Problems with Blue Thunder heads in shock tower car

I have a 532 cast head BBF in my Australian falcon street car. It runs shock towers. I also have a spare set of Blue Thunder B heads in the shed which I was going to have installed, but the guy doing the extractors says we are going to have to cut the towers, do a bit of notching here and there and the pipes are still not going to be ideal.

Would I have this much trouble with a set of P51 heads or something else? He says the problem is the raised and extruded exhaust port.

The other point I will make is that I have an A460 block and Scat forged 4.5" crank sitting at home that someday I will build another engine with. I'm thinking that the P51's might go nice on that engine also. My car is 95% street car, 5% drag car.

The P-51'S will out perform the Thunders out of the box, and sounds like will help your header fabricator also.

Anyone put P51's in a shock tower car? I think the 71-74 mach 1 mustangs have identical engine bays as Australian falcons so if people can make them fit, I'll probably swap over.

why would the BT B heads cause such a problem. Its a chevy header flange, The ports arent raised, the exhaust points almost 60 degrees down, With 2.5" primarys on mine I can swing the engine, trans and headers into a fox mustang assembled. Mater of fact you HAVE to, as there aint no way your slipping them in after the engine is anywhere near being in place. Now the 60's engine bays are puny and CAMY had to cut and move the shock towers to put the BOSS 429 package in, hell the 351C is a tight fit. The 70's engine bays much wider.

I cant say Ive put one in a 74, but the 83 strut tower location poses no problems at all.

busta wrote:Anyone put P51's in a shock tower car? I think the 71-74 mach 1 mustangs have identical engine bays as Australian falcons so if people can make them fit, I'll probably swap over.

The P-51 exhaust flange and ports are in exactly the same location as the OEM Cobra Jet iron heads.

Hi Kim,

Just going off what the guy that was building my pipes said, he would mill some face off the exhaust port for extra room, but it will still be a tight fit and the pipes won't be ideal. A lot of work involved to make them fit on the falcon. There isn't much room down next to the shock towers. We were looking at lowering the control arm mounting point and chopping the towers a little, but it's illegal to do here in Australia.

Ive never been there, so, my 2 cents is worth less than that. Had an associate that had a 351C in a mustang II basically a glorified pinto, and the heads and headers on that were a big pain.

As for milling back the mounting flange, I would think that would make things worse, as I said, on the engine, with the way the exhaust port is designed with the extension flange on the head, the ports from the head point almost down as is, tThere is very little inital bend in the tube to start its down back design.

Without having to deal with that headache though, I don't have any real insight.

Hi Busta.
I've got Blue Thunder B heads on my XBGT Falcon Coupe and did not alter the shock towers. I used off the shelf Pacemaker tri-y and put a chev flange on them and modified the secondary pipes. They're on a 545ci and the car has run 10.82 @130mph.

Lot more info here http://www.460ford.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120204

Do you have anymore info on the pipes? Where did you get the exhaust flanges? Very interested now ( I always thought you had the BT's with the Ford port ).

I currently have Pacemakers and they have the 3" pumped collector already there, into a twin 3" system.

The flanges came with the heads when I got them. I did enquire about some local laser cutting and they could have used a BB Chev exhaust gasket as a template to cut them. The pacemaker extractors are off the shelf items used for the 460 into Falcon conversions, the BB Chev are the same centre spacing as the Ford and after cutting the original flange off a little reshaping, squaring off of the pipes and they fitted straight onto the new flange.

Depending on the flange you use, do a trial fit and check for spark plug socket fit, you may need to reshape a little to get the tool of your choice to fit comfortably. The extractors will sit a little different and you may need to re-align your exhaust, as the "B" exhaust ports are a little longer.

Hope this helps, have you posted any pics of your car anywhere?

bbcoupe wrote:The flanges came with the heads when I got them. I did enquire about some local laser cutting and they could have used a BB Chev exhaust gasket as a template to cut them. The pacemaker extractors are off the shelf items used for the 460 into Falcon conversions, the BB Chev are the same centre spacing as the Ford and after cutting the original flange off a little reshaping, squaring off of the pipes and they fitted straight onto the new flange.

Depending on the flange you use, do a trial fit and check for spark plug socket fit, you may need to reshape a little to get the tool of your choice to fit comfortably. The extractors will sit a little different and you may need to re-align your exhaust, as the "B" exhaust ports are a little longer.

Hope this helps, have you posted any pics of your car anywhere?

I posted some pics today here - https://www.429-460.com/t470p180-please-post-pics-of-your-engines