Derek

I'm thinking electric at this point:)

Hold my beer.

Machine work finished! I can relax a little:) Just got done with their first bath. Still need de-buring and edge finishing but the majority of the work is done. The VCT holes are drilled and tapped but they haven’t been drilled all the way through. Easily opened up with a drill if needed. The head has provisions for three sub plates. Timing chain idler, upper tensioner and a slack side guide pivot. The idler and tensioner are connected to the oil system and o-ringed. It is getting really crowded in there with all the oil passages, head bolts and cam tower bolts. Next stop vacuum resin impregnation.

So here is what I ended up with the o-ring so far. I made the groove tighter than I normally would for a pressure seal. This way the o-ring stays in the groove well enough to handle without it falling out. For those of you that don't know o-ring grooves are wider than the o-ring to give the seal a place to go as it crushes. The valve cover isn't exactly a high pressure seal and the method of attachment doesn't have enough oomph to pull the seal down evenly. I started out with round but it seemed like it wasn’t providing enough contact area based on the mount of torque I could apply to the valve cover. I ran a square for a bit before the head shit the bed but I’m not sure if it was better or worse. My gut feeling is better because I really increased the contact area with the square profile. Makes sense in theoryville, the land of my people.

Ready for battle! Getting geared up to start machining the heads. Officially the first production run.

Got the valve covers done. They are machined and somewhat finished. I've decided that since I don't know what people plan to do for finishing that I would leave the final cleanup to them or their powder coater. I sanded down all of the sand tears, Rand a DA over most of it and then ran them in the vibratory finisher. The flange is grooved for a .125" o-ring. I also machine in clearance for the cam towers and bolts. There are 2 bosses on either side of the plug hole. This is for a KN20 COP. The bosses are positioned so that you can have the plug facing forward or backwards. It's up to the end user to drill and tap accordingly. Semi action shot.

After this batch things should start picking up supply wise. All of the things I control move along quite quickly. Every thing else just takes forever.

I did what I did because it looked nice:) Seriously.

Hi. I don't know what tower with MPI refers to. I mean I probably do but not by that name. I hope demand is still there when I actually have heads to sell. No mater either way as long as I have one:)

Probably not going to happen:) Actually V2 is a one of a kind head. V3 and V4 are virtually identical except for some adjustments to gating and wall thicknesses. V2 in visually different and totally unique. He also ended up with 2 valve covers and three timing covers since they only fit that head:)

Well I hope to be making them for a good long time:) HP specs are based on estimations by Rebello since there are currently no running heads. V2 hasn't even been assembled yet since he decided to retire, build a custom house and shop and put a twin cam head on his Z car all at the same time. Hopefully that will be moving along soon. V3 is moving forward but slowly since it is only a small part of a comprehensive engine/car build.

Thanks. It's kind of cool having a stack of DOHC castings sitting on the floor.

Santa was late but better late than never:) Went down to the foundry and pored the remaining 4 heads right before the holiday break. Went down and picked them up a couple days ago. Next stop Ohio for hot isostatic pressing.

Decent price is the sticking point. Even if you are starting with a raw casting the amount of machining is still pretty significant. A Mazworx 2JZ billet block is $9000.00 FYI.

I personally think it is a good idea. They are Z cars and they are doing hybrid type work. Derek

One thing to consider is to hire a tuner to dial it all in. I had Jeff Linfert setup and tune my DOHC with ITBs and he did it all via email. Spending a little money up front getting things setup by a pro and then learning how to tweak may save you some frustration and get you on the road a lot quicker. I would find one in your area if you want to do dyno tuning as well. Derek

Search on hybridz for speedhut gauges. I love mine.

Here is one from mcmaster carr. BST NPT adapter

The word I got from my tuner is you need a MS3 unit to control VCT. There really isn't a lot out there about VCT/VVT with mega squirt. Miata conversions seem to be the most popular.

VCT cam cores are finished. Really happy to have this behind me. I had one set of S7 blanks so there was no room for error. Cross drilling VCT control circuit. Talk about butt clenching. Sounds a little crispy as the drill bit breaks through the other side. S7 tool steel is some pretty tough stuff. Finished VCT circuit. Still have to deburr the holes. Here is a video of the finish pass ending on lobe 6 and starting on lobe 2. I finish them in the firing order so I don't get confused. The noise in the background are 2 other machines that I'm coding and running at the same time so I try and keep things simple:) Next they'r off to Crane for heat treating and OD grinding.

The dual pulley is what's going to mess you up for aftermarket. Probably rebuilding your existing damper is going to be the cheapest route. FYI I sell a 36:1 kit and sensor mount. EDIS Kit for $220.00

Thanks for the info. Probably going to stick with the local guy for now. He's five minutes away and that is nice.

Not sure what your budget is but I sell a kit that will work with some dampers. $220.00 plus shipping. EDIS Kit

Yea I hate guesswork too. It's as simple as "that's how Honda does it". I never considered it because I don't like to change Honda's design much. Looking at it again I don't know if you could make the journals big enough to clear the lobes and not hit the tower bolts. Also it would make plumbing the VCT a little more difficult. Interesting thought though.

Finished machining the cam towers. I already posted some of these on my blog and facebook page but figured I'd go ahed and dump them here as well. First up is really the last but since is the most interesting part I figured I'd lead off with it. So from V3 forward I have been working on making sure that people who wanted to upgrade to VCT down the road wouldn't be stuck buying a whole new head. This has turned out to be pretty difficult but not impossible. Complete redesign of the valve cover and modifying the pattern, new timing cover design and pattern, modification to the front of the head and redesign of the cam towers. Finding room to fit two oil delivery systems was the trickiest part. Here is a shot of two number one towers with the caps off. VCT on top and regular on the bottom. The only modification to the head and cam towers to switch to VCT is to mill two channels from the 6mm holes out to the oil grooves. To be clear you will need VCT cams and all the timing and valving bits. My opinion on VCT is still that it's probably an expensive gadget but I needed a new challenge and figured I'd see if I can make it happen. So if you are planning on a budget build I wouldn't be holding out for VCT:) Here are some in progress pics. Regulars to this thread have seen this stuff before but people seem to like shots of me making chips. Thanks Derek