Fixing my burned valve...

[mra32]

Would it look tacky?

Yes.

 

my friend painted the block in his volkswagen grabber green and that looked good. Hemi orange blocks look good. black blocks look good. So does silver. red heads on an otherwise unpainted block i think would look bad. Wrinkle paint on engines looks dope. Wrinkle heads with black valve covers would look dope.

 

 

with that said, i am watching this thread since i think I have this problem too. It may have started over a year ago with around 80 on my engine. I'll be doing work to fix some other stuff and whether i fix this will depend on what happens, but I have no plans on doing any head work in the next year.

[xtremerevolution]

Would it look tacky?

Yes.

 

my friend painted the block in his volkswagen grabber green and that looked good. Hemi orange blocks look good. black blocks look good. So does silver. red heads on an otherwise unpainted block i think would look bad. Wrinkle paint on engines looks dope. Wrinkle heads with black valve covers would look dope.

 

 

with that said, i am watching this thread since i think I have this problem too. It may have started over a year ago with around 80 on my engine. I'll be doing work to fix some other stuff and whether i fix this will depend on what happens, but I have no plans on doing any head work in the next year.

 

My only concern with wrinkle painted heads and valve covers is in cleaning them. Anyone have any experience with this?

[Crazy K]

toothbrush!

[mra32]

bigass brush with simple green or purple power would probably do the job in minutes.

[xtremerevolution]

bigass brush with simple green or purple power would probably do the job in minutes.

 

So I cleaned up the heads with a wire brush and they look great.

 

I later discovered that the rocker bolts on these heads are 3/8", and on mine they're 5/16", which is a big problem because I have roller rockers on there and the fulcrums are hardened steel and can't be drilled. So for another $160, I took them to a machine shop and had them drill out the original threads, tap them, and screw in 1/2" to 5/16" inserts. I needed them to be very precise, so its not something I could have done without a drill press.

 

I also tore apart most of my engine and got the front head off. Still need to get to the rear one after I disconnect the downpipe, but most everything is off the engine. The head I took off really doesn't look too bad. All of the valves seem to be in decent shape, so we'll see if the burned valve is on the rear head.

 

After a while I got sick of unbolting shit so i started porting my new heads, and made some massive improvements with the exhaust ports. I'm 100% sure this will make a huge difference. You can see the size of the actual exhaust manifold in black around the port, just to give you an idea of how tiny these ports really are.

 

This was all done with grinding stones on my dremel and my cordless drill. I wish I had my air die grinder back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I kept the ports d-shaped as they were from the factory because A. there isn't much you can do with the floor of the ports as far as flow goes, and B. they were made that way to prevent reversion.

 

I still have to do some light sanding to smooth out the ports a bit, but that's where I am so far.

[tornado_735]

Lookin good!

[xtremerevolution]

Lookin good!

 

Thanks. With the roller rockers, free flowing exhaust, ported UIM insert, ported LIM, and these new heads, I should be looking at some pretty good numbers as far as Series 1 3800's go. Can't wait to get this thing on the road.

Edited April 1, 2010 by xtremerevolution

[88red4cyl]

Can't wait to see how it turns out Andrei... Looking very good!

[Leadfoot]

I will be watching this. I think you will pick up some power from the porting work.

 

As far as cleaning the wrinkle paint, I am not sure it would be too bad. Are you referring to the Rustoleum "Hammered" paint?

[xtremerevolution]

Just ordered new gaskets.

 

Head gaskets

Head bolts

LIM gaskets

EGR gasket

Thermostat housing gasket

Fuel injector o-rings

Exhaust crossover pipe flange gasket

Exhaust manifold gaskets

 

All Fel-Pro parts. What's weird about Rockauto.com is that the exhaust crossover gasket was the last one I added to my cart, and before that, the shipping price was a little over $15. After I added it, the shipping price went down to $8, so since the gasket itself was $6.46, I saved money by adding it to my cart.

Edited April 1, 2010 by xtremerevolution

[xtremerevolution]

This project just went to the next level.

 

I decided I wanted to do some more porting deeper inside the heads, so I bought a valve spring compressor tool to remove the valves. While at it, I noticed some pitting in the valves, so I went back and got some valve lapping compound, and lapped all of the valves on one of the heads using a cordless drill. There's still a slight bit of pitting, but its a much smoother surface now. I figured if I'm that far, I'll replace the valve stem seals, so I ordered some new ones of those.

 

Then I decided that while I'm at that point porting the exhaust, I might as well look at the intakes too, and instantly found a lot of casting imperfections that could be improved by a long shot.

 

So now I'm porting and smoothing (to around an 80 grit equivalent) both intake and exhaust ports to the best of my ability and the tools I have.

 

I'll be damned if I need a tune after this. OBD1.5 FTL...

[RobertISaar]

I'll be damned if I need a tune after this. OBD1.5 FTL...

 

94-95 3800 is completely tuneable...

 

and your project with this sounds like what i do whenever i play with something: start with something fairly small and it somehow snowballs into a day-long project.

[Z34guy]

94-95 3800 is completely tuneable...

 

and your project with this sounds like what i do whenever i play with something: start with something fairly small and it somehow snowballs into a day-long project.

Same here... except I have the LQ1 so things always take forever to fix :laugh:

[xtremerevolution]

94-95 3800 is completely tuneable...

 

and your project with this sounds like what i do whenever i play with something: start with something fairly small and it somehow snowballs into a day-long project.

 

Tuneable yes, but how easily is the question.

 

Still, with my mods, I have a feeling I'll need a tune pretty badly.

[RobertISaar]

Tuneable yes, but how easily is the question.

 

Still, with my mods, I have a feeling I'll need a tune pretty badly.

 

couldn't tell you, MAF isn't my area of expertise and it's all still fairly foreign to me.

 

if the ONLY thing that changes throughout this process is the VE of the motor, you'll be fine, since if the MAF is drawing more air, it will recognize it and the PCM will adjust fuel accordingly. if for some reason, you make the engine more "fuel" efficient(meaning pumping out more power with the same amount of fuel), then you'll definitely need it, since the MAF will be seeing the same amount of air, but the PCM will have no idea that the optimal amount of spark advance probably needs to be retarded to prevent knock.

[xtremerevolution]

Got some more porting work done today.

 

There are some pretty big casting imperfections that I smoothed out. Keep a close eye on the before and after shots of the floor of the intake ports, and the edges of the exhaust ports near the valve seat. Also look at the casting around the valve guide. I didn't get many pictures up, but I took away some material around the valve guide to allow for better flow past the valve.

 

Ridges on the exhaust port:

 

Ridge on the floor of the intake port:

 

Casting around valve guide:

 

Other rough casting imperfections:

 

After shots:

[RobertISaar]

don't suppose you measured anything before grinding? i'd like to see exactly how far these things could be hogged out... good indication of what the engineers though could be necessary later down the road.

 

does like like you'll get a worthwhile increase though. not exactly race quality heads, but for this motor, you should be satisfied with the results.

[xtremerevolution]

don't suppose you measured anything before grinding? i'd like to see exactly how far these things could be hogged out... good indication of what the engineers though could be necessary later down the road.

 

does like like you'll get a worthwhile increase though. not exactly race quality heads, but for this motor, you should be satisfied with the results.

 

Well, I'm still deciding if I should smooth them out more with my dremel sand flapwheel and 120 grit sand rolls. I'm using 80 grit right now and that's as far as I've gone with smoothing. I've heard from some people that you want an 80 grit equivalent as a mirror finish is bad for airflow on intake ports. Naturally, I can only sand where I can reach with my dremel, and those are some damn long intake ports.

 

I'm not looking to make them as pretty and dazzling as you would pay $1000 to get by a professional shop for a race motor, but as you said, I do think I'll get a good increase.

 

I didn't measure them from before, but I do have the second head which is unaltered if I need to measure it.

[RobertISaar]

100% about the finish. you get a mirror finish and two things will happen:

 

you will lose turbulence and the air/fuel charge will seperate and stick to the port walls.

 

air can move fairly easily over other sitting/slower moving air. if you make a mirror finish, that layer of air preventing the "core" from touching the ports and being effected by EVERY imperfection inside of it, which kills airflow unless you have somehow made the ideal port. even guys that custom TIG their own intakes together can't get to this point easily.

[tornado_735]

I'm really looking forward to how this turns out. I was telling a Czech friend of mine about it, and he was telling me about how he used to do that to little 1.1L engines over in the Czech Republic. He said you'll be amazed at what a little porting will do.

 

Finish up! I wanna see what happens!

[xtremerevolution]

I'm really looking forward to how this turns out. I was telling a Czech friend of mine about it, and he was telling me about how he used to do that to little 1.1L engines over in the Czech Republic. He said you'll be amazed at what a little porting will do.

 

Finish up! I wanna see what happens!

 

I'm looking forward to it too. I'll get a lot done tomorrow. Might even be able to get the second head off of my engine, finish porting, and re-install the valves, since the new valve stem seals are in. If I work fast enough, I can even start putting it back together.

[xtremerevolution]

Got some more progress done today.

 

Before:

 

After (I lapped the valves after this):

 

Heads are now torqued down, and I got the first set of rockers on. Then I realized it was 11:00 so I called it a night. I'll finish the car tomorrow.

[tornado_735]

Dude, I can't wait till you light the puppy up.

[RobertISaar]

i did some quick measurements in CAD: from the one pic where it shows a touched and untouched port, it looks like you opened it up by 32.6%....

[xtremerevolution]

i did some quick measurements in CAD: from the one pic where it shows a touched and untouched port, it looks like you opened it up by 32.6%....

 

Yeah buddy, this baby better SCREAM once she's put back together. I'm curious to see if the exhaust note will have changed as a result of the different exhaust port size. Everything inside is SMOOTH now. I even opened up the intake manifolds a small bit since the inner weld had a lot of ridges.

 

The car should be done tonight after work. I'll change the oil tomorrow after the filter has caught whatever particles got into the crankcase while the engine was open that whole time.