Modified K series heads

[p.mole1]

After a disappointing failure with my 1.8 K series money pit, I am going for one last try to boost the power to something reasonable. I have realised I'm not going to make any real improvements with the standard 27 mm valves so I have no option but to go with bigger inlets. My current power output is ok but it's gone after 6500 and peaking at 6000, very strange as it has Super sport cams, so its no good on a track day. I have a really nice Janspeed head with 744 cams but it has standard valves so I think that is going to be another waste of time  as I'm sure it's the tiny valves that are limiting the engine to breathe properly at higher revs

Options are a modified head with 29 mm inlets I guessing well over £1000, second hand £300 VVC probably going to be soft crap? I have found a brand new VVC head for £ 1000 but I will need new cams plus blanking plates.

Or try and find someone to fit larger valves to Janspeed head, it should be relatively cheap since most of the porting work is done? 

Or last option put it all back to standard as a 1.8 Super sport and sell it and buy a Megabucket

[p.mole1]

Is anybody running an Emerald K6 on a VVC as this would be a much cheaper option as I would not need the blanking plates and the camshafts. Whilst not ideal this seems a lower cost option but the actual wiring and operation may be beyond my capability and I suspect it may cost an awful lot of dyno time. 

Would this be possible on an early engine as I am running a 36/2 early flywheel with a distributor 

[TomB]

Not sure about the rest, you you can configure the Emerald for a variety of flywheel trigger patterns, and both that are used on the K series.

[revilla]

If you retain the VVC mechs you won't be running a distributor any more! The VVC system has a second cam belt to drive the rear inlets which operates off the rear of the exhaust cam. No option for distributor. I think you would need to go fully VVC with wasted spark or not at all. If you're going to a VVC engine and keeping the VVC system, you're going to have to replace or modify the engine loom anyway... why not switch to EU3 and run a KMaps ECU? Runs the EU3 VVC engine pretty optimally.

[oilyhands]

It is perfectly possible to extract 175BHP on stock valve sizes if the head is ported correctly. 29.5/26mm valve sizes will require much more extensive porting than the 27.8/24mm valves but can yield sufficient airflow for over 200BHP.

With SS cams and a full port it should give 150-160BHP, add TBs and an Emerald and you should see 170-175, a 29.5mm/26mm valve head correctly ported should yield 180-190 or so, more with hotter cams.

Oily

[p.mole1]

Thanks everyone, I think trying to run the VVC on the K6 is a non starter. It can be done but the mapping could take forever it's going to be too complex. 

I removed my Janspeed cylinder head from it's engine and the inlets have been nicely ported with bronze guides, but the chambers are untouched! as are the exhaust ports! but has solid tappets and steel spring caps and 744 cams It came from a Rover Metro used in some form of rallying.. This head is going to require a lot of work!

Thanks, Oily my current engine is storming on the road but strangely runs out of puff above 6000 rpm?, loads torque with a flat curve and very linear power.Around 145/ 150 bhp on 2 different dynos. On the same dyno a R300 made the high 150's so it's in the ball park. Tried cam swings, 50mm trumpets, air box on and off. I am beginning to wonder if my Super sport hasn't got Super sport cams. 

I am going to see how much it's going to cost to modify an existing head, but it may be cheaper to just use a VVC head, one on ebay at the minute for around £ 300 could be made out of chocolate! A brand new one for £1000 is that expensive?

I would be more than happy with 170/180 and I hoping to make maximum power at around 7500 to lift my top speed and make the most of the current gearing

[p.mole1]

Had a reply from someone selling a VVC head on fleabay £395 it has been reconditioned and he says it's been tested for hardness, I doubt? although they are members of the FER. However it does not look like it has been excessively skimmed. Cams about £500, blanking kit £150, around a £1000 but it could be a bit of a gamble.

Roger from Sabre heads can do a KR1 head for around £ 1000 plus I will need camshafts but at least I know the head casting will be Ok

[p.mole1]

Just had an email from Carl at Emerald and they have the maps for the VVC however the 36/2 trigger pattern may be a problem as this is normally for a single coil with a distributor, however as this engine has a cam sensor so I may be able to run a wasted spark. I am really tempted to try this route as a brand new VVC is available for £1000 and that's all I would need plus gaskets some plugs,wiring. I could end in tiers if I can't make it work as I may struggle with the wiring to the ecu, not my forte neither is building engines  by the look of it!

[oilyhands]

Send me a pic of one of your cam lobes, preferably a side view and I can tell you if they are SS cams. Just pop the cam cover and take the photo of a lobe pointing upwards from th front of the engine.

Oily

[revilla]

I'm getting confused trying to follow exactly what you want to achieve here:

• Having bought quite a few heads now, I wouldn't buy one off eBay that had been freshly skimmed. It can cover a multitude of sins, make a cheese wedge look like a nice shiny new head. There's a lot of stuff out there knackered. I would now ALWAYS buy one that has been freshly removed from a working engine and looks to be OK from a first look - no obvious indentation and the fire rings should be shiny. Then one of the first things I would do would be to get it to DVA for a quick hardness test. If that's OK (all of the ones I've had through this route have been), you can clean it up and mod as required. If not, forget it, no point in throwing money at it. There have been a couple come up recently that look decent around to £180 mark but I can't see anything that I would jump at listed right now.
• If you want to think about light porting work, an EU2 143 bhp head is a nicer starting point than an EU3 160 bhp head as Rover have already machined out a big square edged groover around the valves on the 160 which makes it harder to blend them in smoothly.
• What is the bottom of engine like?  What pistons are you running - I seem to remember forged pistons? What's the CR?
• If you go for a VVC head, you need to decide whether to keep the VVC mechanisms. If you do, then any worries about current cam sensors, wasted spark etc. are taken out of your hands, you'll be running the ones that go with VVC. If you're worrying about the flywheel trigger pattern, is the flywheel anything special? Lightened? If not, just change it, Rover 1.6 36-4 flywheels are cheap. Even if a lightened flywheel, if that's what stands in the way of your plans, surely it's worth just changing for one that gives you what you need? If you don't keep the VVC mechanisms and go for solid cams, just using the better VVC casting and bigger valves you don't need to worry about VVC support in the Emerald.
• Adding the VVC bits to your existing loom isn't so hard, I wrote an article showing how to do it step by step with pictures and that's in the Guides section. That was for an EU3 loom. If you want to continue to run Emerald it probably makes sense to stick with the EU2 setup but the principle should be exactly the same. Happy to help out if you want. If your engine is going to end up as pretty much a stock VVC engine though, you probably won't get a huge amount from the Emerald over what a KMaps remapped EU3 can give, so another possibility would be to change the cam cover and run EU3. But off the shelf it wouldn't cope with a raised CR (Mark confirmed this when I was asking him questions about skimming), which is why I asked about the bottom end. I suspect Mark could easily map it for you to cope with whatever you've got, but then you're losing the "off the shelf plug and play" advantage so probably best to stick with the Emerald.
• I've done a bit of light porting on my VVC, reshaped the valves a bit and fitted the VVCBP270 exhaust cam. Running a KMaps EU3 ECU. It's probably about as far as it's worth taking the VVC engine if you want to keep it using the VVC system. Beyond what I've done, you probably need solid cams to really see the benefits. I've got 166 bhp and 133 lbft at the moment, but I've got an AFR issue and it's running lean. Once sorted I might see 170 bhp. But the real story with the VVC is the torque spread. I've got pretty much all of the torque from 1500 rpm upwards. At 2000 rpm it's already 120+ lbft and it's pretty flat to the rev limiter. And driveability is quite incredible. It will pull at any RPM in any gear, smoothly, no coughing or kangarooing, smooth progression on the throttle. It will actually pull uphill at 25mph in top gear without any hesitation and it will pick up smoothly from 1000 rpm in fifth gear. Not that that is very useful, just to give an idea of how flexible it is. As a road car (I only use it on the road) I absolutely love it. But I'm not sure that the VVC would make an ideal track car (although not going on track I may be talking rubbish and many people probably run VVCs on track and will tell me to shut up). I'm not sure the VVC mechs would be entirely happy hanging off the rev limiter for most of the time. The aim of VVC is to give you a fairly strong top end without compromising bottom end torque and driveability. If you really want big power numbers, go solid cams, forget about the very bottom of the power band and focus the torque higher up. That's my thoughts anyway!

[p.mole1]

Something I hadn't considered,I think the head I'm looking at could be an EU2 as it looks like a manual tensioner I don't know how to tell the difference? the part no for the head is ldf106970  so it's the inferior one I think

The rest of the engine is fine new bearings,liners, rings, oil pump, 160 VVC pistons loads of oil pressure even at  110 degrees.

If it all sounds a bit confusing I am trying to keep the costs to a minimum and I am trying to work out the best way to achieve it.

I am going to see if I can get a Brinell Hardness test locally in the North east someone must do it.

[revilla]

All VVCs use manual tensioner, whether EU2 or EU3.

The picture below shows the visible difference between the two heads. In the bottom picture you can see there is a machined ring cut away around the valves, supposedly to unshroud them where they are recessed into the head to increase flow at low lift. They should really be blended in smoothly, the way Rover have done it leaves a square wall for the airflow to hit which is not good. I've recently done light porting jobs on both 143 and 160 heads and I found it a lot easier to get a pleasing result on the tow 143 heads as it's hard to work around the big machined cuts and achieve a smooth finish without removing excessive amounts of metal. You end up with a much lumpier and uneven result - although how much difference this actually makes when running I have no idea.

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd169/pengy_666/null.jpg

[revilla]

Make sure you get somebody who really knows Ks and their weaknesses to do the hardness testing. Every place I've asked about hardness testing has just replied "you mean pressure testing"? Most engine shops have never heard of it. The whole head doesn't generally go soft, it softens in particular areas. They need to test the right spots. Ideally you would test on the fire rings themselves, but the test leaves tiny indentations, so you would only do this if you were going to skim. If you are going to skim, I would peen it to remove porosity as described by Dave Andrews on his website, then get is skimmed by somebody who can skim progressively - you want to remove the absolute minimum of metal to take the peening marks out. When I've taken heads to places locally they've taken 0.5mm off them and basically trashed them, leaving me with high CRs or messing around with shims, which have been a total failure, both the Gosnays type (the Wellseal bonding fails) and the MLS type shim (which has always leaked water down the sides of the block when I've used it). I've got Dave Andrews to take my heads to the place that does heads for him, they skim it one thou at a time until it is flat and usually end up just taking off about 0.2mm.

[p.mole1]

Thanks  for all the information, it is a 143 head then. A lot to think about, most of the heads I have seen with issues seem to go soft on the exhaust side. I don't know of anyone I would trust to do any engineering work around Tyneside.  It looks like a trip to Milton Keynes if I buy one. 

[revilla]

Personally I wouldn't take it anywhere else :)

[nickh7]

Mr Mole YHM

[p.mole1]

I

It's arrived, it looks like a 143 head but it was still in the original box. I can't believe the amount of swarf left over from machining that is left inside the casting.

I now just need to work out how to remove the VVC timing gears and keep the timing intact.

[revilla]

Looks perfect!

Remove the bolts that hold the VVC mechanisms to the main head castings. Slacken the ones that hold them to the cam ladder by just one turn. Then you should be able to remove the cam ladder in the normal way and as you lift it off the VVC mechanisms will lift off with it.

Flip it upside down and then fully remove the bolts holding them to the ladder. You should then be able to lift each mechanism complete with its cam out of the ladder. Will only move if you lift them up square to the ladder as the cam lobes are a snug fit. Be careful as there is nothing then holding the cam into the mechanism, it will just pull out, but you don't really want that to happen otherwise various little bits inside the mechanism can fall out with no obvious way to know which went where (they are carefully selected and graded to fit at manufacture).

To store them, you can put a plastic cable tie around the mid point of the cam, just tight enough that it can slide along past the lobes, then use another couple of cable ties to tie that one down to the bolt holes in the mechanism casing. That will tie the cam in place.

[p.mole1]

Thanks, all removed successfully, I think it is a 160 head it has 3 angle seats on the exhaust and it was manufactured in 03. I am going to clean up the casting, lots of flashing and swarf.

I have decided to go with Piper 285H as it is much easier and I have brand new tappets and I remember what a tedious job it was. I am assuming hydraulic tappets are ok as Piper list a 300H 

[rj]

285H will work with hydraulic tappets at least up to 8k. I have tested it.

[CycleSi]

I have got a pair of 285H cams to sell if you're interested?

I'm converting to 1444 solid cams so they are now surplus to requirements.

[oilyhands]

Doubt they will fit a VVC head, it requires a different inlet cam.

Oily

[CycleSi]

They have come out of a VVC head.

However, I think I have sold them already as somebody else has messaged me.