NikwoaC's "Commitment Issues" Engine Build
- Thread starter NIKwoaC
- Start date
Honestly, I wish my head guy would have flowed mine for me. Would be nice to have proof of the work done. $50 is a little steep for it, but you wont miss the money later anyway.
smokin joe
Founding Member
I think that the hole for your throttle body can swallow your arm is impressive. Doesn't matter what color your exacto knife is as long as it works.
Those are impressive flow numbers, Nik. I'd let the wait go, in all honesty. That seems to be the status quo for big name companies. HP Performance promised me a turbo kit in 2 months. I got it 6 months later. Fortunately, I knew what I was getting into before I started. I ordered from them because I liked their kits and I was deployed for a year. So the timeframe didn't bother me.
Meh, I wouldn't have flinched if the parts came in on time, but of course, now I'm over scrutinizing everything, haha. I guess it's nice to have the numbers, but at this point it's really just a conversation piece. Not like you can't go to Trick Flow's website and look them up. This sheet does seem to show that my heads flowed a handful more CFM than what the heads are advertised to do. Not sure if that's just regular fluctuation, or if my heads have a different valve job or what. Could also be that the regular 205s have a 65cc chamber, and mine were milled to 61. Dunno.
I may give him a call this week and try to get more specifics about the flow job. Honestly though, I'm getting tired of calling them, haha. It got to a point where I was constantly calling to ask where my parts were, so I'm sure he's tired of hearing from me, too.
Yea, I'm trying to look past it, so as not to ruin my excitement to get the engine back together. The car has just been sitting on jackstands for a while now, and I've already missed a few good weather driving days. Honestly, it's partially my fault for not starting this project earlier in the winter. That or, I should have maybe looked into finding a second 302 to hack into while I drove the car. Either way, I probably should have accounted for delays, and I just didn't do that.
Oh well. The cam will be here tomorrow or Tuesday, then I have my work cut out for me. It's about time to put this bitch back together.
A few reasons, actually, but believe me, I thought about going through Summit. I love Summit!
1. I wanted/needed the heads milled to reduce the chamber size to get any compression on my 302. The OTS 205s come with 65cc chambers, which put me around 9:1, and I wanted high 9s. With the 61cc chambers, I'm around 9.8:1. I'm not sure, but I don't think you can get Summit to mill heads.
2. The heads from TEA came with better springs than the OTS 205s from Summit (or so I'm told). The TEA heads also have titanium retainers- the OTS ones you get from Summit have steel. That's worth a few more RPM and valvetrain stability on the top end.
3. I wanted a one-stop-shop for my whole top end to reduce the guesswork on my end. I wanted to be able to put this thing together and not worry about running into problems because my intake didn't sit right on the heads, or the cam didn't work with the springs, etc. You can buy all these parts from Summit, but Summit isn't going to make sure they'll all work together for you.
The retainers is a good selling point. Just be sure to keep an eye on the Ti retainers every couple seasons, they do have a shelf life and the springs will wear grooves into them. I put them on my car last year and there was much more wear than i expected in the short time i ran them when my car left the body shop. I actually went with tool steel retainers with the new cam setup and will see how they work out at 7500rpms. The reason i bought those was they were only like $140 and they are very close in weight to the titanium retainers.
Just sucks you had to wait so long, i would definitly bitch to TEA, and charging you to flow the heads seems bogus to me, it should say that on the website when they quote the price if thats the case. I called them about porting my lower and they never got back to me... luckily the ports matched almost on the money when we were assembling my motor
Just sucks you had to wait so long, i would definitly bitch to TEA, and charging you to flow the heads seems bogus to me, it should say that on the website when they quote the price if thats the case. I called them about porting my lower and they never got back to me... luckily the ports matched almost on the money when we were assembling my motor
Well, crap. I had no idea ti had a short lifespan. Meh, whatevs. We'll see what they look like next winter and go from there.
I think you will be ok, I saw a set at the machine shop that had been used for a couple seasons on a road race 302 that revved to 8k rpm's and they had grooves worn into them from the springs, but my engine guy said if i wanted to i could use them on my motor(they fit my springs perfect). I didnt feel 100% comfortable about it though. It was one of those things where they would have probably never failed on my motor, but i didnt want to chance it. So we just had a set of tool steel ones ordered with the same specs as those.
- Jul 21, 2005
- 2,169
- 145
- 155
Time for a little update. The parts came in Thursday afternoon.
Well, most of the parts.
I'm not going to say a lot about it, because I'm trying not to dwell on it, but as you guys know, I ordered the parts 5 weeks ago. I was told 2 weeks. To clarify, the heads and intake came in 3 weeks late. The cam, the ONE thing I need to actually make some progress on assembling the engine, is not here yet. Supposed to come in Monday or Tuesday. I'm a little frustrated.
That's been my experience thus far with T.E.A. I can't say anything yet about the quality of their stuff, obviously, as I haven't put it together and ran it. It looks good.
Anyway, below are some pics of the intake and heads. Just as a reminder, the intake is a TFS-R 90mm, CNC port matched to the heads, and the heads are TFS Twisted Wedge CNC 205s, milled to 61cc chambers. Oh, by the way, they flowed the heads (and charged me $50 for it, not sure I asked for that...). Here are the numbers:
Lift - Intake - Exhaust
.100 - 70.70 - 56.90
.200 - 148.9 - 106.8
.300 - 224.4 - 153.0
.400 - 274.0 - 195.8
.500 - 305.7 - 220.2
.550 - 314.7 - 230.8
.600 - 319.3 - 235.8
It doesn't say on the sheet, but I'm assuming that is on a 4" or a 4.030" bore. I have no idea what kind of pipe they ran on the exhaust.
Pics:
Tried to get a shot where you can clearly see the difference in chambers. Notice the shrouding on the stock valves, and also the rotation of the valves on the TWs versus the inline valves on the stock heads.
Stock header gaskets were way too small for the TW exhaust ports. Go figure! So, I'm going to try to trim them up a bit. You guys like my pink Exacto knife?
You has a small arm
Mr. Rustypwnz
Advanced Member
well we sold our TFS R intake, and going single plane with a GM ls TB like on my 98gt, AND a custom cam.
nik: you will lose a lifter or 2 before you mess up the springs or retainers. if you haven't looked into it yet, I would DEFINITELY get some good ones. We killed i think 3 last year, the stock ones just cant take much more than 7k. It didn't destroy anything, they just come apart and would smoke a pushrod, but it gets old changing them.
nik: you will lose a lifter or 2 before you mess up the springs or retainers. if you haven't looked into it yet, I would DEFINITELY get some good ones. We killed i think 3 last year, the stock ones just cant take much more than 7k. It didn't destroy anything, they just come apart and would smoke a pushrod, but it gets old changing them.
This is an awesome build im ready to do the same... how much do you think it will all cost said and done?
Thanks, man! I'm trying not to think too much about cost, because I blew the budget a long time ago, haha! The bill from TEA alone was $3700.
Plus machine work on the short block.
Plus rebuild parts for the short block.
Plus fuel system stuff.
Plus a new clutch.
I'm just really glad the wife has been cool with everything so far!
A single plane with an elbow and a big TB is the way to go! I briefly considered that for my car, but I don't know if I need it for the RPMs I'm planning to run. You can definitely flow a lot of wind with a setup like that.
Do you know what specs for the cam yet?
On the lifter thing, I plan on keeping this engine under 6500-6700rpm to avoid grenading the stock bottom end, so hopefully the FRPP lifters will be OK. When I was ironing out the details with Mike at TEA, I originally thought I wanted to go with the upgraded Comp Cams lifters, but he seemed to think it was a waste of money for what I was trying to do. And it makes sense really, these stock class racers are somehow getting OE lifters to survive 8000rpm blasts, so hopefully I can get them to live with the occasional 6500rpm shift! I imagine if you were going to do 7000 on a regular basis though, aftermarket lifters like the Comp units would be a good idea.
Hey, BTW, my cam came in!!! Here are the specs:
----------------Intake----Exhaust
Duration @ .006:----265*-----276*
Duration @ .050:----215*-----224*
Lobe lift:----------.355"-----.354"
Lift W/1.6 rocker:---.568"-----.566"
Lobe separation: 112*
Notice that the duration numbers for both the intake and exhaust are shorter than a TFS stage 1 cam, but have WAY more lift. The cam is similar to a Comp Xtreme Energy 266 grind, for anybody familiar with the XE cams, but mine has more lift.
Like I said before, the goal of the cam is to tame those cylinder heads and intake and make them usable at low rpm on my little 302, but still have enough lift to take advantage of the wind that those parts can flow, so hopefully it will still want to rev quite a bit. I guess we'll see!
I'll be running a 1.6 rocker for right now, Mike suggested I do that to save spring life, and besides, it's not like I NEED any more air flow with those heads!
In the future, if I ever wanted to run 1.7s, that's ~.604" intake and .602" exhaust lift, for those not wanting to do the math.Renegade cars have been spinning stock lifters past 8k for years, I plan on going 7500 on stock lifters and when my cam was ground i was told the spring pressures need to be right but it has more to do with the ramp rates on the cam that helps the stock lifter survive
SteedaGT9150
Advanced Member
Yep, it's not just RPMs alone that kill lifters. Ramp rate and spring pressure also play a big part.
You and me both!
Similar threads
