I know I post something about this about once a week, but Im jsut anxious to get the head back from the shop i took it to. (most of you know the anticipation im talking about)....


My question is, what kind of a gain can I expect from this head?

I dont know what the dyno number is for my car right now, however I have a pacesetter header and hi-flow cat and 2.25" piping (mandrel bent) exhaust, 56mm tb, CAI, shift+ and thats about it.

the head has a port and polish done to it, it also has an angle grind, im not sure if it was 3 or 5 angle... i think 5, and it has 1mm+ valves.

can anyone guestimate, Im hoping that itll pull pretty hard.... I know the car will not be any 2.4 or eco, but will i be able to compete with a z24 now? (ive been smoked many times before, by z's)

thanks for any replies

I noticed a nice gain when I had mine done. I was able to beat Z and eco before i went boosted too.

what did you port your head to. howmuch bigger.

I didnt actually do it, i bought it and it was already done... i kinda jsut jumped into the whole deal blind and couldnt resist buying it when it was for sale. i should know how much bigger it is, but i have honestly no idea.

i should have it installed sometime next week, im getting it finished on wednsday, and i need 2 days to install it (really one, but 2 days off (tues and weds) in case...)

i think ill dyno it after i get the work done, and if theres a way to measure the porting ill do it, otherwise ill steal my girlfriends camera and take side by side pics of the stock one and the new one.

Spork2021 wrote:what did you port your head to. howmuch bigger.

How would you expect him to measure this? It's not like measuring the block's bore or something...



fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.

Well youre not gonna get high gains, You will notice the difference in flow, And throttle, Its well worth the money in my opinion.

The 2200 head is extreamly restrictive. You should make some very decent gains.

Are you doing the rockers too, or a cam?

I have the rockers, and Ill be getting a cam eventually... thouhgts on what kinda cam i should look into for a future with boost?

The mechanical clearance on the 2200 head is about .480" lift using a safety factor of .060". This means that you must keep your camshaft mild, especially with high ratio rockers. If you want more clearance, you can mill the seats and guides down, but you have to be careful of water jackets (nobody has tried this that I know of). You can also use longer valves, but longer pushrods and most likely a new valve cover will be necessary. Either option will also need new springs obviously, but getting .2" extra allows you to use aftermarket LS1 springs (springs designed for stock LS1 retainers will even work with your stock LN2 retainers).



fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.

Thanks to all of you for the advice, and I will be taking the cam advice eventually, ... notec-- do you have any information such as grind numbers or anything like that for a "mild" cam? Ill have the motor apart, maybe ill do that as well if i can afford it.

I get the head back sometime next week, and my biggest concern is getting it on the motor and firing it up!

also, the shop wont start milling the head to spec for a couple days due to being backlooged... im thinking on having them shave a little off it to bump compression... recommend or no? im going to assume not because i want to do a cam, but which would be better? stock comp. and a cam? or stock can and slightly higher comp?

You can go through Crane, they have a profile catalog on their site. Look in the HR1 or HR3 grind sections. I'm using the HR206-313 with stock 2200 rockers (1.54:1 hopefully) which is pushing the limits on stock springs, the grinds from the other section (HR3) would be a better idea on an NA/N20 car as they have a longer duration. MadJack has HR208-292 which would be a good match with 1.6:1 rockers. The HR214-301 would be more aggressive, but I wouldn't use that with near stock compression. However, with a little block shaving (.030" may be good enough) or a thinner headgasket (.025" would be nice) it may be a nice wake-up (~9.6:1 compression). You would also probably need new pushrods after the shaving/gasket.



fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.

Its probably a far cry from something this motor is capable of without a whole bunch of work, but is there a setup that would get me a nice lopey idle? thats something ive love hearing from v8's... yea i know itll never sound like that, but is there something that can produce a similar sound?

Lopey is possible, but with that kind of overlap you'll need higher compression pistons to keep your cylinder pressures up. Also, it won't sound like a V8, it'll sound like popcorn in the microwave



fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.

Maybe thats not something i go for then.. i dont know if i want any popcorn...

does anyone know where i can get my heads ported?


deleted

All i did is look under automotive performance in my yellow pages and call around and ask shops if they could and what they could do, and picked the one that seemed the most knowledgeable... as far as who is the best, i have no idea... but thats my $.02 on where i started.

did you happen to get any quotes while you were pokin around?


deleted

Well honestly i didnt get porting worn done on this head, however the guy i chose made it sound like anything i wanted to do would be just charging me labor, which was $80/hr... i thought it was $60/hr, but im guessing its more because theyre (for me) using an expensive machine.... however a long time ago (which is more like 2 or 3 months) i was calling and asking for prices on porting, and i got quoted between $400-$600 between like 4 different places, 400 being the lowest i heard and 600 being the highest...

somewhere in that range is what id guess is common... not 100% sure tho.

I've been very busy lately, that's why I haven't been responding alot lately. My responses will probably still take a while, as I don't see things slowing down too much, anytime soon.

The following is what I e-mailed Matt, in response to a PM he sent me a couple of weeks ago. I 'm posting it here, seeing as he posed basically the same qustion to me as he did here about a cam reccomendation.

Choosing a cam is not an easy task and is further complicated by the fact there are only a few pre-made cams for our motors. As you may or may not know, J-BodyPerformance.com has a few grind available for our motors, but their problem is they are way over priced (especially for a reground cam) and much of their work has been questionable the last few years. Import Performance Parts(IPP), just reciently released a series of cams, that were supposed to be on new billet cores. Unfortunately when someone got their cam, it was gound on a cast cam blank, while this is fine for a flat tappet cam, it wouldn't last long on a roller (hydraulic or mechanical) application. A roller cam needs a steel core to prevent the lifter's roller wheel from cutting into the cam's base material, wearing the lobes down.

We are basically left with getting a stock cam reground, unless you want to pay the fee for a first time cam blank (someone was looking into getting Lunati to make some billet blanks, if he could get enough interest, search the performance forums for more info). The problem with regrinds is that we are limited to the amount of total lift and we can only get the lobe centers advanced or retarded about one degree. This seriously limits our choices on cam profiles.

We do have one major advantage with our cams that does help alot, that is the fact that our cams use the same hydraulic roller lobe profiles as the Small Block Chevy! This means there are tons of lobes profiles available to work with. Just about every cam manufacturer have a number of lobes to choose from. This leave you with picking a cam company to work with, my favorites are Crane Cams, Comp Cams and Isky Racing Cams (whom'll be donig my next cam! ). Talk to you favorites and see who you would like to deal with.

This is from Crane's Newsletter:

Crane Cams wrote:Tech Tips


· Lobe Separation - Lobe separation is the distance in camshaft degrees that the intake and exhaust lobe centerlines are spread apart. This separation changes cylinder pressure and determines where peak torque will occur within the engine’s RPM and power range. Tight lobe separations, such as 106°/108° or shorter, will increase cylinder pressure, causing peak torque to build earlier in the RPM range and peak-out in a short amount of time. This is great for dirt track racing, so the car comes out of the corner hard. The shorter lobe separation will also give that rough idle everyone loves to hear. A broader lobe separation, such as 112°/114° or wider, will reduce cylinder pressure. This causes the torque peak to come in later in the RPM range, but also allows the torque to build over a wider RPM range, giving you more mid-range and top-end power. This type of lobe separation is needed in many applications, such as fuel injected, nitrous and blower applications.

And

Crane Cams wrote:· Turbo Cam Grinds - On a naturally aspirated engine with stock exhaust manifolds, running more duration and lift on the exhaust (dual pattern cams) will help make more mid- range and top-end power because of the lack of airflow from the stock manifold. On a turbo application, the amount of cylinder pressure coming out on the exhaust side will be very important since the turbo is exhaust driven. So, you do not always want to relieve that exhaust pressure; you want to be able use it to your advantage. You can even increase this pressure by shortening the duration on the exhaust, while keeping the intake the same. This will increase how quickly the turbo starts to spool up.



In some cases with high boost pressures, you do not want your boost pressures coming in too quickly at lower RPMs. In this case, you will want to just keep the cam grind the same on the intake and exhaust (single pattern cams). This will be the most popular of the turbo cam grinds. Running a single pattern cam, you will not have as many problems with lean conditions at low RPMs. If boost is coming in too quickly, you can relieve some or a lot of the exhaust pressure by going to dual pattern cams if needed.

For your application I would reccomend Crane's HR208/292-14 regrind. This is the same as what I'm using currently, but I think it would be more appropriate for your application than mine. The power band falls off too early in N/A applications, so the next grind I'm looking at is going to come from Isky Racing Cams. The grind I'm reccomending uses symetrical intake and exhust lobes, so that the boost doesn't come in too early, but should run all the way up to redline. It will also bump your power band up a couple hundred rpm and is a good match with the TC.






Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Saturday, January 27, 2007 8:41 AM

i have the same cam OHV notec has, the HR206-313. i'm also using the stock rockers/springs. I'd like to upgrade to roller rockers, but can't go over 1.5's due to it binding the stock springs. and as of right now, i don't think anyone has tried any other springs that allows more lift? the cam does have a nice lil lope at idle though, and pulls hard in the upper rpm's to redline. personally i think you'd be better off going with a less radical cam though like Mad Jack has and upgrade to some 1.6 rockers.



http://jbok.org

red98 wrote:i have the same cam OHV notec has, the HR206-313. i'm also using the stock rockers/springs. I'd like to upgrade to roller rockers, but can't go over 1.5's due to it binding the stock springs. and as of right now, i don't think anyone has tried any other springs that allows more lift? the cam does have a nice lil lope at idle though, and pulls hard in the upper rpm's to redline. personally i think you'd be better off going with a less radical cam though like Mad Jack has and upgrade to some 1.6 rockers.

Don't worry about going to aftermarket rockers, the stock 2200 rockers are a decent setup since they already have the roller trunions. No solutions for 2200 springs yet, at least not without significant machining.
MadJack's cam is actually more 'radical' than ours (208 vs 206), and his cam on 1.6 rockers gives the same lift (for all practical purposes) as ours on the stock 1.54s



fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.

Again guys, thankyou for the help, Im planning on going big with this motor, so Ill take all the information and opinions and options that you can give, you have my thanks!

OHV notec wrote:Don't worry about going to aftermarket rockers, the stock 2200 rockers are a decent setup since they already have the roller fulcrums. No solutions for 2200 springs yet, at least not without significant machining.
MadJack's cam is actually more 'radical' than ours (208 vs 206), and his cam on 1.6 rockers gives the same lift (for all practical purposes) as ours on the stock 1.54s

fixed that brain fart...



fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.

With the cam that notec and red98 are running, are you making more power beyond redline? If you are and were to raise your rev limiter, what kind of valvetrain problems are you going to run into?

Generally speaking, any cam with 210* or less intake duration at .050" will not put any more power over the rev limiter. Actually both OHV notec's and my cams peak out around 5000 rpm and drop from there, according to Desktop Dyno. We could both use a cam with more exhaust duration, slightly smaller lobe centers and slightly earlier intake center lines. That would give us a fair bit more top end, with a slight low end gain.

For N/A purposes, generally (there's that word again!) speaking, the best stock computer compatable cams are in the range of 204*-210* intake duration, with about 6*-12* more exhaust duration, 112*-114* lobe centers and an intake lobe center in the neighborhood of 108*-109*. Almost any of these can be re-ground on a stock cam. Note, I did say generally speaking here, your individual need will vary, depending upon the rest of your motor, your drive train and chasis.

Those with the 2200s will want to keep the total valve lift below .480", new stock replacement valve springs and get a set of stiffer chrome-moly pushrods, to prevent any valve train failures.