have talked to a few of the Briggs performance places about work on heads. Lord'a mercy, folks are all over the place on this topic. First off, I ain't planning to go into the bottom end of the motor. Keeping that stock. One guy said a little polishing, porting, no decking due to changing valve train geometry, and putting in the new stainless valves. Prob. around $360 parts and labor. Other one said port, polish, angle grind, trim valve stems .003, deck .035 to .045, changing up the exhaust port, new stainless valves, and I would need to pull my intake and send it with the heads. Close to $700.
Not gonna lie here.......I thought I know pretty much what I wanted and now I am totally clueless. Any educated opinions? (real life experiences would be nice!)

I think you'd be better off taking BoatDr, 50hptiller, Codys etc advice. Guys that use these motors like we do.

call cody at setxperformance

Do this is the same order:

Timing advance key
Cam
Moderately Deck Heads
Mikuni Carb
Performance muffler

Cannot go wrong with this. You can port and polish for a little more added boost but I think you will get the most bang for your buck with this list of mods. There are experts here that will set you straight, particularly the BoatDr. You can try to do these yourself but its comforting to know that an expert like the BoatDr can get it right for you without the headache.

Already got exhaust and carb....the folks I got this info from are sponsors on this forum, both very reputable. Just baffled as to how they can be so far apart on reccomendations.

I need to talk to boat dr tomorrow about my rev limiter anyway. I have not gotten his advice yet. I gt my carb from him and he was very customer friendly. I shall speak at him tomorrow.

Cody's custom heads perform like no other, His valve lapping and port work are top notch. Haven't ever seen a better set of heads other than his. Give him a call.

It all depends on what your trying to achieve.


Just a port and polish job cost me $160 from a local nascar engine builder.

I also have a set of heads that cost me $450 that were P&P, decked .055, and five angle on the valves that a lot of us were using in the beginning and no core needed.


As take'emgator mentioned those Cody heads look great, and from what I've heard perform very well also.

Jim, i had my intake ported ( dont wanna polish this too much), exhaust ported and polished, valves reseated, and heads decked .030. also went with the 1.5:1 rockers (tricks it into thinking the cam is aftermarket SOMEWHAT). did not make a huge difference on the top end, but the holeshot and load carrying is night and day. your buddy nasty nate helped me with pulling everything apart and putting it back together, and Aaron (Yates) did the valve and port and polish job, and sent heads to a local machine shop for the decking job.

and when i first read the subject of this, my first thought was "how in the hell did he get corn kernals fused to his cylinder heads???"

Damn, been baiting the hell outta turkeys and ducks.....The heads got hot and the kernels stuck to em....oh yeah, I don't think Nate is very interested in helping me out.