Engine Drivetrain 1st Gen Cooper S Adventures in head porting..

Step 1:


Actually, I think those were steps 2, 5, 8, and 10 through 13.

Anyway, I bought a spare head a while back, intending to use it as a core to have someone else do my porting. In the meantime, money became tight and I found a friend who has done lots of porting in the past who offered to help. It seemed more logical since I have the summer off to just go ahead and port the head that's on the car, so...

I got it off the car and we took it apart:



First 8 springs measured at 1.7" were 73, 73, 75, 76, 76, 76, 77, 79, and 80 lbs.

Blue'd and scribed:


.. and start grinding

Notice how it it almost looks like I know what I'm doing..


Also note: tools intended for much bigger engines, for the record, are kind of hard to use. More over, tools intended for use on aluminum would also have been helpful.

Early on from the valve side:


Exhaust port side after a little preliminary grinding:


Intake port side after some grinding:


And just started sanding with 40 grit before it started to get dark:


Disclaimer: don't try this at home. That is, unless you know what you are doing and/or you don't know what you're doing but agree not to blame me if and when something goes terribly wrong.

More tomorrow when we finish most of it up. Still have some work on the valves to do, but hopefully everything should be back on the car by the end of the week. I will immediately regret posting this if, for some reason, something does in fact go terribly wrong. However, that's why having 2 heads is better than 1.

 

Yes, I've been meaning to get a shot of it. I'll snap one today.

 

That's a newman cam. Stock one had similar wear, however:


Just much narrower area and no pitting like on the newman.

That's probably 25k miles on the newman and 60k on the stock cam, many of them hard miles. I should have numbers on all 32 springs by the end of the week. My measurements at home probably weren't that accurate anyway, so I'll be borrowing some tools at the machine shop.

From there, yes, I am definitely looking at my options for springs. Probably something cheap (more stock springs, shims maybe) until I can afford to replace both the cam and springs with more exciting options.

 

In a quick glance it looks like 0.397 as per http://www.newman-cams.com/pdf/bmw.pdf (just in case anyone wants the #s)

 

Alright, car is finally up and running again. I think fixing the inner axle boot was actually harder than the whole head porting project. Wideband so far is looking good, hitting 11lbs of boost at 3500 feet altitude, 50% humidity, and 105 degrees ambient. Will take it out again tonight and see what happens, then hit the drag strip in a few weeks until I can find a dyno.

I've been considering getting it tuned in the near future but I'm dubious about the two nearest options for that.

But.. to the pictures! I didn't get anything too fantastic of the final ports since the light wasn't good. Just take the C&C pictures you've seen and pretend they're a lot rougher and 'handmade' looking.

Swirl polished valves:


Putting the head back on is easy as 1:


2:


3:


And couldn't resist touching up the intake manifold and horns while in there. Didn't have quite the right tools to make them perfect (no mirror finishes here) but we did get the ports perfectly lined up. Took a little material off a gasket or two and had to do a bit to get the intake manifold ports perfect with the head including opening up the outside holes so there was more wiggle room on re-installation.



And for bonus points, this is the one and only spare part I ended up with: :mad2:

13mm head... any ideas!? :crazy: