legacycentral bbs

I know this has been discussed over and over and killed and kicked while it was down, so on and so forth....but...I could never find a concenses.

I just got into a discussion with my brother about head swapping and as I was browsing the board looking for answers to all his questions I came on this post.

http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic. ... =22b+heads

The basic idea is to stick with our heads and work on them. Bore out the valve size and work on the valvtrain mainly. Is this the general concensus of the easiest and best course for heads for our cars??

This is basically what Im doing.

Take the stock heads, have them rebuilt and increase the flow plus swap over to roller rockers. I dont plan to increase the valve size, they aren't that small to begin with.

Swapping any other type of head is going to take a random assortment of custom work to fit. You have to worry about piston clearance and compression ratio, turbo plumbing and attaching the matching intake which brings in a whole other set of electronics issue.

What did you do to make them flow better? How much did all your head work cost?

Well Im waiting to get a couple questions answer by Nate from S-squared, I can then give more details. Everything now is just estimates.

The heads from the donor engine already had something wrong so rebuilding them was inevitable. He has a connection with someone that supposedly has a couple decades of experience with headwork on domestics. He will be doing a streetable amount of headwork on my request since I dont plan to drag race or anything.

For 350$CAD i've got a set of DOHC Legacy B4 heads that flow pretty well, and are used stock at 7500rpm. (you need to swap intake manifold too.. but that's no big deal)

Stock 2.2l turbo heads + Rebuilding and upgrade costs could probably get higher than that ! hehe

That's my way of thinking.

"but that's no big deal"

Whats the bore of the heads and do the coolant/oil passages line up? What is the volume, will you need to replace the pistons? Which headgasket can you use? Which intake manifold will you swap to match them and how will you deal with the wiring? Will the new intake use different injectors and fual rails? Does it have the IAC on the wrong side? Does it have EGR? From the research I have done it is a big deal.

Oups, ok i've spoken too fast.. and forgot about some concerns i now "take for granted" for my personnal "case".

shame on me, please don't be too hard on the shovel when you'll hit me.. hehe

it's true, any DOHC head convertion will require a lot of other things that have been already discussed elsewhere, so i won't come back on this (unless you or another user request it ! hehe )

To make this short, lets just say the amount $ needed to convert the engine over to new heads could also be spent on refurbishing/improving the original heads.

That sounds fair. As cool as it would be to put on other heads, probably the most "efficient" and "least complicated" meathod would be to rework the current heads.


EDIT: now that this is finally resolved...Jason you have my permission to lock this thread and make it as a sticky.

j/k

That was pretty funny

If you plan to go with stand alone engine managent from the get go I could see switching heads/intake as not being an issue.

The only real problem is that up until recent no other turbo heads where available. You have to get something from overseas.

I got a very good qoute for 2 used WRX heads at 1000$ complete. Normally expect to pay alot more becuase if the valves arent bent in a used engine they are often sold complete to a swap project. (bent valves from the accident)