Best heads by year or motor

[Bgunner]

I know there is a cooling port difference between the ranger head and the Taurus head requiring the use of a Taurus head gasket on the ranger block when using Taurus heads. Many manufactures use a different cam in a truck engine than a car engine so I would look there also in your searches to see if there is a difference along with combustion chamber differences.

I'm pretty sure ford made a dual cam head that gave it a big boost in HP and torque but this requires a matching block to accommodate the feature, seen one in a ford probe so I know they exist but not sure they were an option in the ranger.

It was @ericbphoto that was building a 3.0L for his overlander. There hasn't been an update on that in a while.

 

[pjtoledo]

truck and car cams are different per specs on replacement heads. trucks are ground for low end torque. ( whatever you can get from a 3.0 )

I know there is a cooling port difference between the ranger head and the Taurus head requiring the use of a Taurus head gasket on the ranger block when using Taurus heads. Many manufactures use a different cam in a truck engine than a car engine so I would look there also in your searches to see if there is a difference along with combustion chamber differences.

I'm pretty sure ford made a dual cam head that gave it a big boost in HP and torque but this requires a matching block to accommodate the feature, seen one in a ford probe so I know they exist but not sure they were an option in the ranger.

It was @ericbphoto that was building a 3.0L for his overlander. There hasn't been an update on that in a while.

Duratec dohc 3.0 used in several cars.
Yamaha dohc 3.0 & 3.2 used only in earlier Taurus SHO

 

[pjtoledo]

where did you find the 205 hp figure?
the spec sheet lists a max hp of 154 for the 2003/4

 

[stmitch]

As far as I know, no Vulcan was ever anywhere near 200hp from the factory. That was likely a mistake, where somebody used the 3.0 Duratec numbers for the 3.0 Vulcan by mistake. For the Vulcan specifically, there's no difference between Taurus head castings and Ranger head castings.

There are a couple of basic differences in Vulcan head castings over the years:
1) Combustion chamber shape- Flex fuel heads had kidney shaped combustion chambers that were slightly smaller than regular fuel chambers. But at some point (around 02-ish?) Ford quit using different chambers for the flex fuel engines, and just used the same shape for all of the Vulcans
2) Valve stem size- I don't recall the specific year, but Ford switched the size of the valve stem (from 7mm to 8mm if I recall).

Later heads also came with conical valve springs too which theoretically should reduce valve float. Ideally, the smaller combustion chambers in the early Flex heads could lead to slightly higher compression if the target is an all-out, balls to the wall performance build. But I wouldn't expect much, and the shape can make valve shrouding an issue. If you're porting them anyway, it might not matter. You could have the heads decked and get the same or better results.

 

[Curious Hound]

I know there is a cooling port difference between the ranger head and the Taurus head requiring the use of a Taurus head gasket on the ranger block when using Taurus heads. Many manufactures use a different cam in a truck engine than a car engine so I would look there also in your searches to see if there is a difference along with combustion chamber differences.

I'm pretty sure ford made a dual cam head that gave it a big boost in HP and torque but this requires a matching block to accommodate the feature, seen one in a ford probe so I know they exist but not sure they were an option in the ranger.

It was @ericbphoto that was building a 3.0L for his overlander. There hasn't been an update on that in a while.

Yes. That's been backburnered for a while. But, dang it. I feel like my current engine is probably getting tired.

 

[Ranger850]

where did you find the 205 hp figure?
the spec sheet lists a max hp of 154 for the 2003/4

I don't really remember. Wikipedia maybe?. Could be like @stmitch said and be a misquote. But ot did say for the 07-08 models, the last year for the Vulcan in the Ranger. I'll try to retrace my steps and link the info.

 

[Ranger850]

I've retraced all of my steps. I guess It was ME who got the #'s wrong. Max output for the Vulcan in 2007 was 155 bhp.