283 Cylinder Head Decision

[cwcarpenter98]

Frankentruck is letting out a fairly large cloud of smoke on initial startup, but stops smoking fairly quickly. It's been happening for a bit, but seems to have gotten a lot worse after sitting parked for a couple months.

I've got 3 options, and I'm not sure exactly which one to go with. Please give your opinion on which might be a good choice to make.

Option 1: Replace the valve seals on the current head. I think it's an 8.5:1 CR head. Not sure if it has hardened exhaust seats or not, but the casting number is 3814480. It has a regular rectangle on the front.

Option 2: Use the set of Power Pack heads that I have on my other 283. I know they don't have hardened exhaust seats, and I'm sure they need to be refreshed, so I was thinking about taking them to a machine shop to get all the work done before swapping them on to the block in the truck.

Option 3: Buy new heads, but I have no clue where to even start with that.


Future goals engine wise is to eventually rebuild the 64-65 283 that I had pulled out of the truck. I'd like to have a good bit of torque in the 1500 to 3000 rpm range since this truck isn't a race truck and I do plan on occasionally towing trailers.
I'd also like to keep running 87 pump gas if possible since I enjoy driving my truck but don't enjoy higher gas prices.

I wasn't planning on doing the engine build now since the current block still has nice crosshatching and still seems healthy.

So, what would y'all recommend?