74 RV 440 acquired.

[Squeezy]

Just acquired a 74 440 from an EV with trans, all ran good when he drove it home last year. Totally complete.

NOW.
4006630-440-4 Is the number on the block,
once I get her in the shop here, I wanna pull the heads and just give her a good looksy to see what I’m dealing with.

On these RV motors, I know headers are a must, what other mods should a guy be doing to get the most bang for your buck? I’m working on building it into a cruiser/street brawler. Maybe a whiplash cam, a march performance bracket kit, aluminum eddy dual plane intake, but are the heads good/bad? What would you do for on the cheap? There’s always the future to go crazy and build it to pull hard but what would you do?

 

[Kern Dog]

You probably already know that these engines are always low compression, almost always under 8 to 1. The pistons are usually way down in the hole over .125. The heads are usually the same as what any other 1974-78 440 was built with, casting number '452 with approximately 90-92 cc chambers.
Yes, headers help. The main handicap is the low compression due to the pistons. Any "performance" camshaft that you use will have more aggressive specs compared to stock and will result in less torque below 3000 rpms while improving power above that. This isn't terrible if the heads can flow but the stock heads don't flow well above 5000 rpms. The 68-70 440 Magnum had a HP peak under 5000 rpms but had compression ratios about 2 points higher.