Improving the exsisting way of holding on the cam caps in the evo head, here is an stud that was made by Brock Fergussen at ARP for us. We engineered it to replace the standard bolt and hollow locating dowel that Mitsubishi uses currently on the head. No more collapsed dowels, pulled threads in the head and helicoils, and its a stronger stud. The locating shoulder serves as a positive shoulder to position the cam cap.

This issue first became apparent when a head was brought in to have a lifter noise repaired and it was found to have cam housing caps that were out of round, excessive oil clearance which led to oil starvation at the end hydraulic lifters after a cam install that had distorted the caps. The other issue with the factory bolts is that it is quite easy to have the threads pull out of the aluminum head if they are over tightened. This stud will help prevent that , as well as give repeatability with posistioning the cam cap when I line hone the camshaft housing bores to gain the proper oil clearance.

 

I've always found your work impressive... but what does a full "head package" cost from you, and what is turn around time? Black and white please, no shades of gray.

 

I agree.

I'd also be interested in your services and i'm pretty close to Madison.

 

A full head package could consist of numerous things that could affect the cost of the work. Depending on what was required to be done from milling the head, washing, deburring, porting work and to what degree, combusiton chamber modifications, valve guide replacement and honing, or are you talking about having me make valve guides out of a better material? I s it a standard 3 angle valve job, or is there oversize valves being installed? Do you want different valve angles? Are the standard bolts and dowels being replaced with studs? Are the cam housings being clipped and rehoned to size? Etc, etc. There is a lot of variatios that can be done to get to the colmpletion of a job. There is a great deal of time sent to set up, measure and get it all right, so not to frustrate your question, but there is more of a grey area depending on what the customer wants in the end.

 

I think you could have"lines out the doors" for head packages. You need to put up cost and performance options, similar to what BJ's and Buschur have - Stage 1-X.


And how much does this new stud kit cost? Are they available now?

 

Don't take this in the wrong light, but I am not so sure that I would want "Lines out the door" If all I was doing for the rest of my life was doing Evo heads, I think I would shoot myself, or die of boredom. My goal is to deliver quality, not quantity, so while pretty much everyone else out there is offerening there stage whatnot "packages", thats great. I sit down and look at what is offered and for what price and I scratch my head in amazement as to how inexpensively that stuff gets done. I look at the data I gather, what I learn on each job, what equipment and tooling I need to make to do what I desire and the amount of time I need to spend to get it right and I flat out relaize that I cannot compete with them. Nor do I want to for that matter. I am not here to try and take my palce in line with the number of other shops out there that offer competive prices and quick turnaround, I treat each job as a new one, an opportunity to maybe try something new, and get as right as I can. I have mentioned before, I am a one man operation, its just me, so I can only eat so much at once. I need to pace myself and pick and choose which jobs I can take on and at what time. So at this point, I have no "Stages", nor do I see mylsef expanding to a huge operation where I am farming out work and subcontracting parts and people to bang out cookie cutter engine packages that I pay someone $10/hr to put together for me and I slap my name on it and profit. That approach just isn't what I am interested in. All of the work I do is an investment out of my pocket, and mainly of my own time, so its tough to balance out workload vs. time vs. investment vs.profits.


The studs for the cams are in prototype stage right now, and are being made shortly, I am feeling out the market for them to see if it would be something that any of you would be interested in. They wont be cheap, but they will do their job.

 

No offense, but we could hear the Anthem playing in the back ground. I don't know what "others" expected, but I was asking what YOU charge for YOUR work. Sure the variables are endless, but what do you see as a must for someone wanting say, 400whp out of a daily driven engine (head work)... and then what next, etc. I'm not rich... and not well off anymore (at least for now). However, after building aircraft back in the day... there is a time and a place one must spend money for the long run.

 

That seems like a bit of overkill to me. Why not just not over-torque the stock cam cap bolts? 14 ft-lbs is all it takes.

 

Because while that might be okay for someone who drives their car hard for 12 seconds at a time, those of us that like to be on track for a good half hour might have a more expensive weekend ahead of us.

 

Zuess, the stock cylinder head on your EVO will probably only last for 150,000-200,000 miles on your car. It will make 400 whp in a daily driven car and not give you any trouble for the same amount of time.

4G63>oooo, all you want is a head that will handle 1/2 track time? Leave the stock head on the car. Check out Robert Fullers success with his EVO8.

Torque specs on the cam caps are 15 ft lbs, don't overtighten them. I have never had a bolt break or strip. I would say the genius that did the cam job in the head talked about above probably didn't have much of a clue.

BTW, I'm not argueing or bashing what Darkhorse is writing. As he said, he is taking a different approach to what he is doing. I am only stating the stock 4g63 heads are AWESOME pieces that have proven themselves for millions upon millions of miles of use and racing over the last 15 years.

David Buschur

 

Chris,

Thank you for Saring with us your findings. I do see a advantage to studs over the factory bolts. Plus PM or email me when you have a spare set to sell to me.

One question is why did you shave the cam cap guides? Could have left them or is there somthing I'm not seeing. Also if a hobbiest was installing them him self what tool would you need to shave off the guilds?

My Best

Eric

 

ARP bolts are designed because of a higher need of consistent seal/clamp at high stress points. Just because one guy gets a crappy cam install doesn't mean that the Mitsu design is a crappy one. Those ARP bolts will be under enormous stress when you consider the torque spec to be 14-15lbs,...right. By the way he charged this guy $3500 to do the work on his head, INSANE!

 

I always like overkill if I can budget it in... you could remove over a quarter of the fasteners in your average large comercial aircraft and it would still operate without issue... Nice reply without drawing a line in the sand BTW.

...and it is Z-E-U-S people... spelled out on the left side of the screen...

 

That's a lot of damn money... but was it $3500 worth of work? If so, might not be such a bad thing... an easy grand over what I'd have to spend though.

 

Uhh, no, it will be fine for people who road race, too. People have been using the stock cam cap hardware for years with the 4G63, including road racers.

If you do get this new hardware, you will need to align hone the head to correct the cam journals for out-of-roundness. Then you have to hope that you didn't screw that job up and move the cams closer to the crankshaft, which will require cam gears and degreeing with a degree wheel to correct for the timing difference.

It is a huge pain in the *** because somebody else screwed up a cam install by torquing the cam cap bolts too much?

If you don't screw up the cam cap torque and do it right, in the right order, you won't end up with any issues with the stock hardware, and you won't be needlessly machining away some of the metal in the head that you might actually need at some point later on when you really DO need to machine it!