Derek

The OSG is above the head plane but it's an add on so it's not a problem. Even if I could easily incorporate it into the casting I wouldn't as it may not be right for certain builds or layouts. For this build I may machine a housing that screws into the 1 1/4" npt that will hold the thermostat and 2 temp sensors. I'll use the 3/4" NPT bung at the front for the bypass. This build is getting the Jenvey THS52i 52mm throttle bodies. I'm glad to hear you like yours. Can you post or PM me some pics of your linkage setup? I'm using the same basic manifold as I have on mine but I'm making a new top pattern without injector bosses.

Right now it's going to be an inline. I don't know the exact config yet but I've tapped the the outlet 1-1/4 NPT. I may end up welding something to it or using the threads. There is a 3/4 NPT boss at the front that could be utilized as a bypass. Right now as it's designed so you can surface the top of the head without dodging anything. I couldn't fit the thermostat housing in there without it being above the plane. Tony and I agreed having a round boss would offer the most versatility. I'm tapping it now because it's in the machine. One area I'm a little shy on is real estate for temp switches. I may have to weld a couple bosses on. With the OSG head (i'm not dissing it) You build according to the head you are given. With the KN20 the head is tailored to the build you are doing. It wouldn't be impossible. Especially if you are going to powdercoat the valve cover. If the K20 coils will work electronically then they would be the best choice as they will fit physically. There would need to be a boss added to the valve cover at each plug but that isn't a big deal. Derek

Wish mine looked this good:) Thats a piece of 1.25" linear shaft that I'm using as a gauge rod. It's a little snug when I tighten the bolts but the top of the head is nowhere near flat so I'm not surprised. Yes the numbers will be smaller on the next set of caps:)

If you have the money then you should buy custom pistons. But like every product even people who can afford it hit a price point where it's all stop. You cross that line and it's hard to get back on the other side of it. It will be interesting to see what 10.8:1 CR will perform like on a NA build. He can run it for a while and if he want's more CR then he can go that direction and change out the pistons. The B motors ran 10.2 - 10.8 CR.

Not sure on the time frame. Crane is 7 weeks to get the semi finished cores done. I talked to Crower and they said they could put one of their grinds on it since at that point it's a normal cam core. That's another couple of weeks. Crane just doesn't have any stage 1 type grinds in their library. I'll have the head done with the initial machining next week and I'm hoping everything else is done by the time the cams are done. After that it's someone else's (the owner) time table but he's ready to keep it moving forward. It's not a simple swap. Converting to ITB's from carbs at the same time. Yes this is a NA build. Rebello kit with a 81mm stroke. Getting the chamber to 45 is a big deal. using the Ozdat calculator A normal 83mm crank stroker with 240 rods and a KA piston with -2.6 dish will make 11.3 :1 static CR. That means if you are running that combo currently it becomes a head swap only. If you have that combo and are turbo I can just make the chamber larger. The price for my stroker just went way down:) I can't afford a 9000 RPM monster so I'm going to build a fairly mild stroker. I have all the parts except the pistons and now I can buy off the shelf. derek

All right you asked for it. Got the bottom side completely finished. Surfaced, head bolt holes and dowels, water passages. Chamber roughing pass. Finish pass completed. The chamber size is 45cc's. This should yield a 10.8:1 CR on the build without changing the pistons. Thanks Derek

That would be really close. When I put my motor in the first thing I did after it was bolted in was to put the hood on and clay between the hood and oil cap. There was less than an inch. Probably 13/16". There may have been 20mm but I didn't measure it. An oil plug as opposed to a cap would pick up another .787" I love America, where I'm expected to be able to work in imperial fractional, imperial decimal and metric. I'd like to shoot whoever stopped us converting to metric in the 70's.

Agreed. What I'm saying is project the outline of the combustion chamber onto the top of the piston and dish only that. The quench pads on the head are still interacting with the flat areas of the piston. I can't do the kind of hand work people like PMC and Rebello do so I look to technology and it's precision. So if I had a combustion chamber like the one on the OSG head I would be looking at ways to not have to hand grind each chamber. That one just popped into my head.

Got V2 back from radiology and it looks great. The changes I made to the gating and risers solved the bad shrink porosity I had in the front. Got it all set up in the mill. If it aint crashing it's clearance. Won't be many updates as it's basically the same as last time. If I see something interesting while I'm machining I'll post a pic. Derek

Not so much if you have to ask and more like I'm not sure yet:) Here is what I do know. Raw castings, head, valve cover, timing cover. $4500.00 Machining all of that so that an automotive machine shop can do their thing. At least $1500-$2000. I've only done one so far. I'll know better after V2. Camshafts. Better figure $2000.00 - 2200.00 for the pair finish ground ready to go. Automotive machining basic. $1500.00 - $2000.00 Parts: These are prices I banged together working off of the internet. Valves $200.00 - $500.00 Springs and retainers $500.00 - $800.00 Exhaust guides $75.00 intake guides $75.00 valve seals $60.00 12 rockers $28.00 each $336.00 exhaust shafts $75.00 intake shafts $75.00 Better add another $1000.00 for stuff that I can't remember right now. Plus you need induction and exhaust. Better have $15000.00 in the bank or plan on using used stuff like I did or working deals. V2 is a paying job with all new parts so I'll have a much better idea of pricing. Cheaper than OSG but still freeking pricy. Plus you'll actually be able to get one as I don't plan to be stingy:)

Based on his instagram account he seems to know what he's doing. The OSG head he's restoring is amazing.

Look I'm starting to buy in bulk:) Got the valve covers on Friday. This time the firing order filled great but there was a short run on one of the ribs. Nothin that a little tigging won't fix. I have to do a little more work to the pouring basins as they are having trouble keeping it choked up with metal. You wouldn't beleive how much math and Voodoo goes into designing a pouring system.

Any reason why you wouldn't dish the piston as opposed to working the chamber? Seems you could machine the outline of the combustion chamber into the piston. The quench areas would stay the same. If you wanted to be really anal you could cc each chamber and change the depth of each dish to match the chamber. Removing 1mm of depth at the perimeter of my chamber changed it from a 53cc to a 44 cc chamber.

Thanks Yes. It made it tricky because now if I screw up the machining on one in the later stages then it's a specific location. Fortunately 2, 5,and 6 are the same. 4 is the odd bird and 1 and 7 are specific because they are front and rear. Bottom line...Don't screw up the machining:)

I'll make anything if there is demand but it just seems like there are really decent 4 banger options out there. I was easily convinced by myself that a 6 cylinder version was a good idea. A 4 cylinder.....Not so much. Now if someone wants to donate a 2 door dime for "development" purposes I may be swayed:) It's still cheaper than an OSG:) That should give you some comfort.

This head should really perform best with a turbo. It flows lots of air and getting a NA motor to move enough air to realize the heads potential can be a bit pricy.

Speaking of V2. Starting to chug along. The head has been held up waiting on radiology testing so I've been working on other components. So I bit the bullet and decided to try my hand at making cam towers. They are machined out of 6061 T6 and match the factory specs except for the cam bore size. I opened the bore up to 1.25" since I have a nice Sunnen hone and the smallest it will go is 1.25". I increased the cap thickness accordingly. I also changed the design on the cams a bit. The front is the same as a KA24 and matches the cam gear. I'm doing away with the adjustable hubs and replacing them with multiple dowel holes and a drilled gear. With this combo I'll be able to have 1.25 degrees of adjustment with 2 dowel pins. Stronger, cheaper, better. I'm also incorporating the thrust bearings into the cams and having Crane grind them to size when they do journal #1. The main reason for this was it let me increase the diameter of the camshaft at the end. Mucho stronger. I made a fixture plate to bore all 7 towers at a time but for right now I'm only doing one at a time. I bore each opening without moving the table switching the towers in and out. This way the bores are all in line. Went a lot faster than I thought it would. The bores came out wicked smooth. Much better than the used towers I'm running on mine. SMOOOOOTH Hope to have my hands on the head next week to start machining. Derek

I saw a post on the Tomitakau site that he CC'd his head at 30cc's. I don't think he expected that and could be chalked up to surfacing. Also if the chambers were as cast then hand finished there could be some discrepancy from head to head. That was all through google translate though. on this build I'm shooting for a NA chamber size of around 43cc's. The motor that V2 is going on has a Rebello stroker kit in it. According to the Ozdat engine calculator it will put him right around 11: 1 CR without a piston change. All that extra meat in the combustion area is going to really make things nice as far as customization. Derek

You may want to pull the head and check the bores. At one point Nissan unloaded a bunch of NOS short and long blocks. I bought one of the short blocks and it was fine but I heard from a couple people that found rusty bores on the long blocks after they pulled the head. Derek

I used the factory bezels from the speedo and tach and had to bring them in through the back. With the cap they would no longer come in from the front.The gauge areas on the cap I used looked like it wouldn't interfere with the 3 stock gauges up top.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a couple of years. I put it off until I had my Speedhut gauges. Well I no longer had any excuses. This is not a cheap way to fix your dash but a lot cheaper than sending it out for recovering. It is destructive to the original dash so if you plan on having it recovered in the future this is not an appropriate mod. The basic premise is this. Bond the cap to the existing dash. Fill any gaps between the cap and dash with expanding foam. Fill and blend all the seams and gaps. Paint entire dash. I had done the “fill the cracks and texture paint” kludge to my dash years ago. It worked for a little while, but soon a new crack started and then the old ones opened up again. I decided that I wasn’t going to fix the cracks again and opted for a full cap instead. Most of the installed caps I’ve seen were warping and generally ill fitting because of it. I knew from the start that I was going to get the thickest cover I could find and then float it on the existing dash. What I mean by float is let the cap stay as close to its original shape as possible. I had made a couple of posts looking for thicknesses on different caps but didn’t get much data. I called Palco Industries which makes the Dashtop cover. I was told the base material started out at 1/8”. This is the same thickness I use for my speaker panels so I was pretty optimistic that it would have a decent thickness in even the deeper draw sections like the gauge pods. Unfortunately when it arrived it was pretty obvious that the base material was a lot thinner. Most likely 1/6” I decided to stick with it as the overall look was really nice. The hair cell texture was your standard ABS so it isn’t an exact match to the factory but it wasn’t too bad either. You have to pull the dash for this and it is not hard to do so no matter what, don’t convince yourself you can do it in the car. I pulled the dash and did a test fit of the cap. It was immediately apparent that it wasn’t going to just slip on. You could wrench it into position but in doing so it put huge stress on it. Over time that stress would lead to warpage and de-lamination from the pad. I knew it wouldn’t be perfect but I was surprised at how far off it was. The plastic in the gauge pockets is extremely thin so be really careful you don’t tear it during fitting. In order for the cap to sit in it’s natural position I had to do a fair amount of grinding to the pad. Mostly to the tops of the gauge pods and the outer corners. Even then I had to throw in the towel and accept a small amount of stress. I took a DA sander to the entire dash surface with 80 grit to improve adhesion. In reality something even rougher like a 50 grit sander would be better. Speaking of adhesion I decided to use SEM 2 part plastic repair #39847. It’s made for repairing plastic bumpers and is sand-able like bondo with almost no shrinkage. I already have the dual mix gun but if you don’t have one you will need to get one. By the time it was all said and done I used the entire 7 oz tube and 6 mixing tubes. The next part is how I should have done it not exactly how I did it. Slip the cap over the dash and hold it as best you can in position. Four hands would be helpful. Press the dash cap in different areas looking for low spots. Make a mental note of where they are. I was mostly concerned with the top surface. Take a drill and a 3/8” drill bit and drill through the dash pad all the way out the back through the metal frame. Make sure you don’t hit anything important. These are the holes you will use to inject the foam. I can’t tell you how many you need but for every injection hole I figured one or two vent holes. You don’t want the foam to build up pressure so a 2:1 ratio is probably pretty safe. Now you are going to glue down the cap. I did mine in multiple steps. I wiped the inside of the cap with lacquer thinner. This will clean it but also etch the surface a bit. First area to glue was the top and a small amount down the front. This helped me create a stable base so that as I pulled the rest of the cap into position it wouldn’t effect the top. I concentrated the glue around the edges and the high spots that I knew were contacting the cap. After that I put a few dabs in the shallow in between the foam holes so that it would help keep it from distorting. I slid the cap down over the dash. I only needed a couple of clamps to hold it since I sanded the pad to fit. I pushed the cap down in the low spots so it would make contact with the glue. When it springs back it will hopefully have a ribbon of glue between the dash pad and cap. The glue has a 7 minute work time so you need to have everything well rehearsed. After about an hour to dry I then methodically worked my way around the rest of the cap glueing things in position. I masked off areas of the dash that weren’t covered. Pay careful attention to the glove box area. I didn’t and my glove box door is now a very tight fit. No problem as it’s non functional but if I wanted it to work I would have had issues. You need to pull the cap outward as far as you can to have enough clearance. So now you have the basic adhesion done. Now you are going to glue ALL the edges. This is where you decide how well you want it to look. I was really nervous about the gauge pod areas warping over time and ending up in the sight line of the gauges. I took a heat gun and a pair of heavy gloves. I heated the plastic that fit poorly and then shaped it against the dash pad with my gloved hand. This is really tricky. You go from not hot enough to disaster in the blink of an eye. After I was done shaping I went around and glued most of the edges. More on that later. So now that all your edges and high spots are glued you have a dash cap that is theoretically under little or no internal stress and held in position with the old dash. The problem is that you now have hollow areas that have little or no adhesion, plus there will be a temperature differential between the bonded areas and the hollow areas. Can you say “air gap”. Time for the foam. I used low expansion window foam. It seems to be the right choice. It stays soft like the original pad. It also has a bit of adhesion going for it. Not much shear strength but every little bit helps. Position the dash with the gauges facing up so that extra foam falls away. Gravity is your friend. I would shoot the foam in one hole and watch for it to appear in one of the vent holes. I moved from section to section. Don’t over do it as even the low expansion foam expands quite a bit. If it has no place to go then it may distort the dash. I found that if you kept the fill holes clear of foam then it allowed the still expanding foam a place to go. That may just be a guess though. After the foam dried I noticed a huge improvement in the feel of the dash. It felt solid with almost no discernible hollow spots. This is why you seal every edge. Time to finish. I took the remaining glue and used it as filler to build up the areas I wanted to feather in. I sanded them with 80 grit. Most of the areas I was working get covered so I wasn’t too worried abut it being perfect. If I was trying to do a flawless job I would fill the areas and then use the SEM texture spray. That stuff really works well. I cleaned off the dash and sprayed it with SEM trim black out of a rattle can. Looks great. Do’s, and don’ts. When working with the glue and foam where multiple disposable gloves. This way you can use them like tear-offs. Make sure you mask off areas that you don’t want glue on. It’s much quicker to mask stuff off than it is to try and sand it later. Be careful with the gauge areas of the cap. They are thin and fragile. Remember to drill the foam holes before you mount the dash cap. I didn’t think about foaming the dash until after I had bonded the cap. It limited me to only being able to drill a few holes. You can scrape extra glue off with a thumbnail for about 20 minutes. Also sand the glue as soon as you can. It’s soft and will cut like buttah. Be really careful with the foam. It can get out of control really quickly. Don’t foam it and go to lunch. I thought it was done expanding and I looked over and I had a new area growing. The SEM trim spray is lacquer and really susceptible to moisture. It will blush really badly if it’s too humid. Ounce it blushes it can be a real PIA to get it right. Here is the finished product installed in the car. I’m really happy with the results. It’s the hot season in Florida so I’ll update the thread in the fall. I daily drive the car and it’s parked outside in the sun. I do use a window shade most of the time. Derek

Core boxes?!!! We print cores man:)

I wish. I'd love to do that project some day but that may be a few years off if ever. We'll see how well the heads sell.

Hi I believe the B series spins CCW. The K is clockwise. Where things get confusing is I take the entire K series valve train and rotate it 180 degrees. The cam grinds are all referenced from the front of the cam and what direction they turn. At least according to Crane. And this only applies to asymmetrical grinds. So even though I have things all twisted around the custom cams make it all work. Whitley Tune may jump in and correct me but this is my understanding of the lobe design. Derek

Panels are now in production. Well they will be on Monday:) These things were a PIA to make work. Although it seemed like a simple concept to me when I started it really wasn't. There is a lot of things to have happen in a very small area. Drivers side mimics the existing ECU cover and uses it's mounting screws. Good space to get to the dead pedal but you may have to adjust your driving style to get to it. Passengers side mounts using the existing upper trim screw and a piece of industrial velcro attached to whatever the black control box is above it. To get to the fuse box you loosen the trim screw, pull the panel away from the velcro and slide it out. The screw hole is slotted so you don't have to remove the screw. If this seems like a lot of work to change a fuse you probably should fix what's blowing your fuses before buying speaker panels! Here is a small sample of the scrap I made getting the fit, the vacuum forming and the CNC routing worked out. Now for the fine print. Price is $115.00 plus shipping for the pair. Right now I'm only saying they fit a 77 for sure as that is what I have here. I've lined up a 78 and 76 for testing. I'm looking for someone with a 75 test fit as well. So if you have a 77 you're good to go if you have a 75 or 76 and want to participate in my testing program PM me. I looked at pictures on line of the different year interiors and they all look the same to me. The clutch pedal is really really close to the grill. There may be cars where you have to dent the grill a little up front at the top so be prepared for that. I was more interested in keeping the dead pedal as clear as possible. There is 2" of clearance from the mounting lip to the ECU for speaker depth. You may be able to do a deeper speaker with a spacer ring and some grill mods but I'm not making any claims to that. The Pyle PLS502 fits as it is. PM me if you are interested in a set. Thanks Derek