Derek

I'm going to need a lot of piston clearance for this to work Deep drilling the head bolt holes. This stuff make my butt hole clench. Bottom all done. (I think) This is the ground flat bar that I'll use to set the rotational angle when I roll it over. That way I'm indicating off of the bottom surface. Well that's it for today. Unfortunately real work has got in the way. Back at it tomorrow.

made some progress today. Got the chambers mapped out and ran a finish pass over them. I designed the chambers to be "as cast' but I knew that was a mistake as soon as I saw the casting. Since I didn't have any machine allowance to work with I did the best I could. There are a few spots I'll have to hand work. I finished the surfacing and recut the water passages to make sure they were in the right spot. They were off a hair. Really happy with the quality of the casting so far. I engineered the gating system to prioritize the combustion chambers and bottom of the head. The metal is super clean so far. Tomorrow is head bolts and spark plug holes and hopefully decent progress on the top side.

And so it begins. I had some imperfections in the bottom of the casting that I needed to weld up. I made a light cleanup pass to make sure I got everything filled. Next is mapping out the combustion chambers to see exactly where they ended up. Castings shrink when they cool. Although there are formulas to use as guidelines it's still a bit of a guessing game. All the core sand inside makes it especially hard. So far so good!

You should probably check out post#163

Thanks This head is about longevity as opposed to power. If the opportunity avails itself I'll get it flowed. Earlier in the thread flow numbers were discussed but I can't remember them off of the top of my head. Iron would be tougher to work with and would not offer any benefits.

Made some real progress. One of the biggest fears I’ve had about the machine work was getting the valves in the right place. Lined up on the rockers at the top and centered on the ports at the bottom. The choices were coming in from the bottom or drilling in from the top. My “brain trust” and I came to the conclusion the having the valves line up on the rockers was more important than having them line up on the ports. The method that seemed to work the best was machine the combustion chamber and drill the spark plug hole. Roll the head over 180 degrees and indicate off of the spark plug bore. I then faced the top surface and drilled, tapped and reamed the dowel holes for the cam towers. I rotated the head to the angle I wanted and found the center of the rocker shaft that corresponded with the guides I was drilling. By working from the shaft I knew that would give me the best consistency. I then stripped the cam towers from the head and drilled the holes. For the test I used a 5.5mm drill. Thats the diameter of the valve stems. Despite all my measuring I couldn’t decide whether they needed to be at 25 degrees or 25.5 degrees. I started at 25 and naturally 25.5 seemed to line up a lot better. The nice thing about the printed sand is when I finally get the right data it will remain consistent from casting to casting. Now that this hurdle is behind me I’ll finish up a few more things on the mockup and hopefully be loading up the casting next week. Really happy with what I ended up with. The valves are sitting up since the chamber is mimicking the raw casting but the spacing is great. I drilled out the original 25 degree holes and plugged them. I also bumped the exhaust valves outward a bit. Hard to see but the valves line up really well on the rockers. Hope it goes this well when it's in aluminum

Yes I'm going to proof out the head bolts and dowels and the intake and exhaust as well. Derek

Made a little progress. Finally got my 4th axis completed and the rest of the mods made to my second mill. I decided to machine a plastic mockup so I could practice on it as opposed to my only casting. Normally if this was a production casting I would have budgeted for at least one casting to practice the machining on. If the casting didn't run I was going to use it as my setup but since I have no budget and a good first casting I'm going with a plastic test head. I'm only doing as many cylinders as necessary to get my valve angles right. Hopefully I'll get things worked out in the first or second try. It's still rough as I ran out of time today. Hopefully if everything works out I'll be machining on the actual head later this week or the following week.

I bought one of these when nissan was liquidating them. Actually I missed out on the full engines and ended up with a short block. I was lucky I did as a lot of the full engines had a lot of cylinder wall rust. So based on the exterior and the fact that the inners are probably rusty as well I would not touch it.

On this head the combustion chamber is going to be larger than I would like. I designed it to be "as cast" but the surface finish of the printed sand is a little too rough. Each combustion chamber will need to be machined smooth. That is not such a bad thing as in the future I'll cast the chambers much smaller. This will allow for tailoring of the chambers for each build. I think this one going to end up in the 53cc range. Bolting it to my flat top piston motor isn't going to set the world on fire but when I build my stroker with custom pistons then it will start to come alive. And at the rate I'm going with this project we'll all be driving electrics I'll be doing a custom intake that will match the as cast port size and then becomes round. The size of that final round TBD. I tend to try to design manifold ports so that you can machine them to size with a regular 3 axis machine and then do a little hand blending. So if you are running 50MM like me then you would port match the manifold in the CNC mill to 50MM then hand blend the transition to the rest of the port.

Update time:) No it's not dead... Fortunately/unfortunately I got super busy with my regular customers. I ended up having to hire someone just to keep up and this really sapped my free time. The good news is I see light at the end of the tunnel. I managed to get my second mill squared away and I'm putting the finishing touches on the 4th axis I need (want) to do the machine work. Hopefully in a couple of weeks things should start moving forward again. I'm going to machine up a plastic mockup to test my valve angle measurements and after that then it's time to start machining the raw casting. And now for the shameless plug. I did find time to finish up some EDIS mounting kits so if anyone is looking PM me. The link to the kit is in my sig. Thanks Derek

About time you showed up:)

How about we move this to a different thread as it's all I can do to get a conventional cam made let alone solenoid operated valves

Nothing right now. Trying to get on the other side of the backlog of work so I can get back on the head. Kind of sucks as I really want to be working on the head and not the current pablum I'm working on now. Not every job I do is exactly awesome if you know what I mean:)

Thanks Garvice Things are at a standstill for a bit as I'm swamped with regular pattern work. It usually slows up a bit this time of year so hopefully I'll be able to get back on it soon. I did receive the package from EFI Hardware and the stuff looks great. The only complaint I have (and I passed this along to them) is the edges haven't been de-burred. It makes a really well made piece feel kind of cheap. And it is well made. I'll hit it with a de-buring tool and all will be fine. Got a price for doing the head work. $1250 for seats,guides, deck and surface, multi angle valve job. This includes cutting the valve seat pockets in the raw casing. Another $550.00 to line bore the towers should I choose to go that direction. I have no idea if these are reasonable prices or not. Making progress on the modifications I need to make to my new (old) mill in order to do the machine work on the head. So things are happening just nothing particularly interesting:) Derek

Well just pulled the trigger on these: 50mm with 88mm horns. Got them from EFIHardware.com. I can't seem to find it listed on their site but I bought them from them on ebay. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/6-Cylinder-DCOE-Individual-Throttle-Body-ITB-Plus-TPS-and-Fuel-Rail-Kit-50mm-/261574780258?ssPageName=ADME:B:BOC:AU:1123 They look to be really well made for the price. A lot cheaper than the Jenvey's and probably a lot better quality than OBX. They were recommended by 1vicissitude and considering what all you get for the price I really don't think I could do better. The intake will have injector bungs molded in so the lack of them in the throttle body isn't a problem. I really like that they use sealed bearings as opposed to bushings. They also use 6 degree butterflies which is another plus. I wish they were cast looking as opposed to billet but that's just me. I like castings:) Derek

Yea dealing with Tony for the last 2 years had me saying that to myself more than once:) Talk bout cryptic. I stumbled across this guys blog when I was doing the initial research on the head. I was amazed the stuff he was accomplishing working out of what looks to be a portable canvas garage and an old enclosed trailer. I looked at his approach like something artisanal where is my approach is more production. And it looks like he got his done before me:)

And in another 7 you'll just have it printed in metal:)

$9000.00 and it's yours

Hey Jeff long time! Yea this thread is pulling people out of the woodwork. The good stuff is about to begin! Derek

Just got back from meeting with Mazworx. Went very well. Nice clean facility. Plus they do have a boring bar that will do the cam towers. I hear what you guys are saying about the cam towers but it just seems to me that one clean bore through the towers and a cam ground to fit is the way to go. Of course when I get the price I may be of a different mind. I just checked and I can get 29mm drill rod. I could use that to check the alignment of the cam towers. If it locks up solid then I have a problem. If it doesn't then I'm good to go. The bottom line is I have options and I like options. They were just finishing up one of these bad boys for a 2JZ That's a big ol block of aluminum! Well at this point everything is in place to get it to the next level. I'm bringing a second mill online to do the head as my main mill is just too busy. I don't want to be rushed on the machining and I don't want to have to keep yanking it out of the mill.

They are split caps My fear is inaccuracies between the sets of caps being as they are coming from different motors. For the price of a line bore and considering how hard getting cams are it seems it would be good insurance. And a lot easier than me setting up a jig and boring them. Actually I would mount them to mandrels and face the mounting surfaces but that's still more work than I want to do. I prefer "And line bore the cam towers while you're at it" approach. I don't think I'll have much trouble with the tune. I managed to get that contraption of a manifold running really well. I was just pointing out that it can be tricky. Although when your design mantra is; Look cool Look really cool Actually run Then there is a lot of room for definition of "drivability" I think the honda guys have problems because they are still using the honda ecu. With megasquirt (and others) the ability to get a decent tune makes it pretty easy. Of course if you're looking for every bit of power that's a different story. Derek

Meeting with Mazworks tomorrow to see if we can come to terms with the machining. My big sticking point is finding someone to line bore the cam towers. At least someone semi locally. I really think the cam towers should be bored especially since we are custom grinding cams. Might as well take advantage of that. They are 29.5mm right now and finding someone with a bar that small has been problematic. Mazworks doesn't have one.

Well that was my first plan. Make a manifold that would accept a DCOE pattern. After further research in that department it seems 52mm ITB's are the bare minimum for a stock K20. That kind of leaves out all the DCOE style and puts you right into the DCO. I may be interpreting this wrong but that's the conclusion I've drawn at this point. I'm going with ITB's because I want them. From a tuning and drivability stand point a plenum with a single throttle body would probably be better. But I don't care:) Derek

Time for an update. I believe we have a path forward on the cams. I have a steel foundry that I indirectly work with that pours 8625 alloy. Billet cams are made from 8620 hot rolled bar. I'm going to make a set of traditional style patterns of the cam cores and have them poured in 8625. I just had a very good conversation with Ron Iskenderian and he is interested in grinding the cams. He said the 8625 would be fine. I'll send him the cast cores and he'll handle the straightening, heat treating and grinding. I need to reverse engineer a set of K20 cams to get the data we need. Anyone have a set laying around they can part with? I don't have firm pricing yet but it will be considerably cheaper then the prices we were throwing around before and more in line with normal cams. So we're back on track for now and moving forward. Derek