If anyone could be interested

[Mike SVOR]

Why don't we just do supra engine swaps?

If you've actually seen these heads, you'd know that there is nothing stopping them from working properly.
Does anyone even make a bellhousing that mates a volvo motor and a tremec?

Look, It's just something to mess around with. If I wanted real power, I'd order a 4.0 inline six cylinder from Austraila and lay down 1000 hp.

Haven't you ever tinkered with stuff till it worked and worked fine?
or have you lost your roots and become a bolt-on-boy who can't do anything without calling up Stinkfinger.

 

[gio_momma]

Yeah...I'm bolt-on boy......

I just choose to not waste my time on some "Rube Goldberg" (AKA: mickey-mouse, MacGuyver'd, ghetto-rigged, bailing-wired) swap, just to see if I can get it running. If you see me as someone who tries stupid projects just to finish them...you don't know me very well.

Soooo...there's some sort of philosophical reason that you want to stop the swap at the headgasket? That's about the silliest thing I've ever heard. You'll make or mickey-mouse EVERYTHING else, just so that you can ONLY use the head...when the rest of the motor would drop in easily...and run great.

You gotta have a custom bellhousing to bolt it in??? Wow...who's "bolt-on boy"? We just made a plate for the wagon...LOL...

 

[Mike SVOR]

Yeah...I'm bolt-on boy......

I just choose to not waste my time on some "Rube Goldberg" (AKA: mickey-mouse, MacGuyver'd, ghetto-rigged, bailing-wired) swap, just to see if I can get it running. If you see me as someone who tries stupid projects just to finish them...you don't know me very well.

So your pinto was a marvel of modern technology? You built it to compete with the top dogs right? It had massive amounts of R and D involved in it too right?
Come on. It was a stupid project just to see how well it would do.

Soooo...there's some sort of philosophical reason that you want to stop the swap at the headgasket? That's about the silliest thing I've ever heard. You'll make or mickey-mouse EVERYTHING else, just so that you can ONLY use the head...when the rest of the motor would drop in easily...and run great.

You gotta have a custom bellhousing to bolt it in??? Wow...who's "bolt-on boy"? We just made a plate for the wagon...LOL...

Welding a chunk of aluminum to the back of the head and machining it flat is some type of major fabrication work that only NASA machinists can accomplish? Geeze, maybe custom headers should only be made by welders certified to work on nulcear power stations.

C'mon Joe, This ain't rocket science. It's a simple process that takes very few dollars. And, the head will flow with the best. If memory serves correctly, the volvo head flowed more than the ARCA head @ 400 lift.
Plus, it's twin cam, can be converted to solid buckets and revs to the moon.
It's an awesome head and it's gona work.


old chinese adage: Man who says it will not work should not bother man making it work.

 

[gio_momma]

Welll...I didn't bother to bolt the turbo stuff on the existing shortblock that was in it "because it was there".

The point was to build a fast, reliable and affordable car. So far, it looks like I've accomplished all three and you've accomplished NONE.

So what's your aversion to just doing the job correctly and not half-assing it? The Volvo is every bit as good a motor as the 2.3 is...Ford owns them...what's the problem? You could get the shortblock as easy as you can get the head, all the stock stuff will work, it's 10X easier to do and you won't get into all the ghetto-fabulous "mods" like welding the chambers, boring out the headbolt holes and extending the heads match the Ford block.

If the head is so wonderful...then why not use the rest of the package that it mates with correctly?

And as far as the flow deal goes...some of you guys are into racing flowbenches...some of us are into racing cars. When a 16V Volvo makes more power than a cast iron-headed 8V Pinto motor, then you get to talk and not before then...then you have a LONG ways to go before you get to talk smack about the good 8V heads. Until then, you ought to stop flapping your gums.

For that matter, I bet I'll be kicking your ass with a duratech LONG before the first Volvo makes a pass without spraying the track with coolant.

 

[Mike SVOR]

The point was to build a fast, reliable and affordable car. So far, it looks like I've accomplished all three and you've accomplished NONE.

Joe, Joe, Joe. I've accomplished all three also.
Fast: low 12's with no spray
Reliable: never broke a single part except for a junkyard follower.
Affordable: did it for about 2500 including car.

If I put my motor in a pinto, and sprayed it, it'd run 10's no problem. Hell, If I spray my car the way it is, it'd run in the 10's.
Not rocket science.
My car still runs.
I'm building another motor for the volvo head. It will be a quick swap once completed.

 

[gio_momma]

You did that with a Volvo already????

Why didn't you say something?


OHHHH...you're talking about all the stuff I've been doing since the early 80's...ohhhh...I see...LOL Good job guy...I'm sure you can probably pull off a small-block Chevy swap, too.

Then in that case, the Volvo "project" has not accomplished any of those goals, has it? Fast? Reliable? Affordable?

Joe, Joe, Joe. I've accomplished all three also.
Fast: low 12's with no spray
Reliable: never broke a single part except for a junkyard follower.
Affordable: did it for about 2500 including car.

If I put my motor in a pinto, and sprayed it, it'd run 10's no problem. Hell, If I spray my car the way it is, it'd run in the 10's.
Not rocket science.
My car still runs.
I'm building another motor for the volvo head. It will be a quick swap once completed.

 

[Mike SVOR]

You did that with a Volvo already????

Why didn't you say something?


OHHHH...you're talking about all the stuff I've been doing since the early 80's...ohhhh...I see...LOL Good job guy...I'm sure you can probably pull off a small-block Chevy swap, too.

Then in that case, the Volvo "project" has not accomplished any of those goals, has it? Fast? Reliable? Affordable?

Ahh, I see, you were talking about your ultra cheap, and reliable focus. Good to know your running the stock 2.3 iron head on that thing. What computer do you have on that? Isn't it the 88 Tbird computer? Wow, 8's with a stock cheap 2.3. I would never have guessed.


If you missed the point, I was previously talking about my 2.3 as it sits. Cheap, fast and affordable. Now I'm at the next step. I can either buy a Esswanker 4000 dollar head, ORRrrrrrrrrr, I could weld a chunk of aluminum to a 100 dollar head and make the same hp. And before you jump to conclusions, This will be done on race gas, not meth, like some people run on.
If you think that is a hard thing to do, you should probably find a sponser and get professionals to do your work for you.
lol

 

[Mike SVOR]

Oh wait.
If you were saying that your old pinto was fast and cheap, then comparing it to my accomplishments. Didn't you spend Seven Thousand dollars to get it that fast?

http://www.fordpinto.com/pdfs/htorodapril1999.pdf

 

[gio_momma]

No. You could buy the car and build it for that at full retail. Shidel went as fast as you have for about a grand, didn't he?

You can run in the 11's on an UNPORTED iron head if you're on the ball (MC Racing in KC).

And like I said before...flap your jaws about how fast your bastardized Volvo is when you can make it down the track as fast as a stock iron-headed Pinto motor. You have a LOOOOONNNGGGG way to go before you get to talk trash about Esslinger's cheapest head, let alone an ARCA or Midget.

But...it seems like that's pretty much all you can do at this point, right? Better keep talking...

Oh yeah...I would have answered you sooner, but I was at the track, running mid-5's at 127 in the 1/8th, blowing the tires off through first...off the shelf ARCA, off the shelf cam...you better get welding on that piece of crap Volvo deal if you think it "flows" enough to go that fast.

 

[Mike SVOR]

No. You could buy the car and build it for that at full retail. Shidel went as fast as you have for about a grand, didn't he?

You can run in the 11's on an UNPORTED iron head if you're on the ball (MC Racing in KC).

And like I said before...flap your jaws about how fast your bastardized Volvo is when you can make it down the track as fast as a stock iron-headed Pinto motor. You have a LOOOOONNNGGGG way to go before you get to talk trash about Esslinger's cheapest head, let alone an ARCA or Midget.

But...it seems like that's pretty much all you can do at this point, right? Better keep talking...

Oh yeah...I would have answered you sooner, but I was at the track, running mid-5's at 127 in the 1/8th, blowing the tires off through first...off the shelf ARCA, off the shelf cam...you better get welding on that piece of crap Volvo deal if you think it "flows" enough to go that fast.

Joe, admit it, the only reason your so against this head swap is because it would be taking money away from your boys at Esslinger. If that isn't true, why do you give a f ck? Really. What the hell do you care what someone on the internet does to their car? Nobody want's to hear you over and over again telling them how it doesn't work and how they should buy an Esslinger head or even more retarded, use a volvo motor.

You have proven my point by telling everyone that the swap shouldn't be done because of the bore alignments. Obviously, you don't know what your doing.

Me, talk? Uhh, I don't need to talk. I believe that's what you do all the time and then brag about how fast your car is. Just because the rest of the ford club doesn't want to go blow the esslingers to get free stuff doesn't mean we are pee-ons.

So, instead of running YOUR mouth, maybe you should see the possibilities of the cheap volvo head and let some try it.




oh, but wait, your car is faster than mine. That means I have to listen to you and do what you say.

 

[gio_momma]

They're selling pallets of heads...to RACERS. I don't get money from Esslinger, they're my friends. They help me with my car and I help them when I can.

You could cannibalize every 16V Volvo motor in the world and it wouldn't make one bit of difference to me or them...about .00005% of their stuff goes to turbo guys and I think they're pretty much OK with that. They do race parts.

I think it's stupid because it's stupid...there are better, more reliable swaps that you can do easier and cheaper that will run better. You can put a little propeller on the front of your car if you like...it's your car. If you're going to editorialize about how it makes your car faster, them I'm going to call .

 

[Mike SVOR]

They're selling pallets of heads...to RACERS. I don't get money from Esslinger, they're my friends. They help me with my car and I help them when I can.

You could cannibalize every 16V Volvo motor in the world and it wouldn't make one bit of difference to me or them...about .00005% of their stuff goes to turbo guys and I think they're pretty much OK with that. They do race parts.

I think it's stupid because it's stupid...there are better, more reliable swaps that you can do easier and cheaper that will run better. You can put a little propeller on the front of your car if you like...it's your car. If you're going to editorialize about how it makes your car faster, them I'm going to call .

So what your saying is, you see nothing wrong with Essmaster selling a single head for 3,500 dollars? Do you know what kind of quality head you can get for a small or bigblock ford for half that?
We're talking almost four thousand dollars here. For ONE head.

OR, I could weld a $1.25 piece of aluminum to my volvo head.

Hmmmm, decisions, decisions.....

 

[SVO1]

So what your saying is, you see nothing wrong with Essmaster selling a single head for 3,500 dollars? Do you know what kind of quality head you can get for a small or bigblock ford for half that?
We're talking almost four thousand dollars here. For ONE head.

One head for an engine that is not mainstream, and there are not 500 companies building heads for.
So Honestly I do not see 3500 as being overpriced for an aluminum head for a 2.3.

 

[Mike SVOR]

One head for an engine that is not mainstream, and there are not 500 companies building heads for.
So Honestly I do not see 3500 as being overpriced for an aluminum head for a 2.3.

But Joe says they're selling "Pallets" of those heads.
That's not mainstream enough? Shoot, that sounds like TFS to me!

 

[gio_momma]

One head for an engine that is not mainstream, and there are not 500 companies building heads for.
So Honestly I do not see 3500 as being overpriced for an aluminum head for a 2.3.

And $3500 is for a complete ARCA head with whatever cam you want. Even the valves are adjusted. I basically have an ARCA on the wagon with a short-track oval cam.

A bare CNC-ported SVO head is 15-16 hundred or it's the same price for a D-port with valves. They only sell ARCAs complete, because the valves and parts are different.

But hey? Like Mike says, just go on down the the boneyard and slap on a Volv head...LOL...there are lots of guys doing it and they're all making the same power as an ARCA-headed motor.

 

[DougNuts]

One head for an engine that is not mainstream, and there are not 500 companies building heads for.
So Honestly I do not see 3500 as being overpriced for an aluminum head for a 2.3.

Don't they have a new head out that is only $1500?

 

[gio_momma]

Don't they have a new head out that is only $1500?

Yep, complete with Manley valves, CV Products guides and Crower springs...I think they might be $1600 now, but I'm not positive.

 

[gio_momma]

 

[Turbopit]

Don't they have a new head out that is only $1500?

Yes, the D-port "street" head. Great head for someone who wants hydraulics. Capable of nice power. I know of at least one very near the 500hp range with high octane, without any real "exotic" parts that is a weekend cruiser/track car. Non-trailered. I'm not quite that brave, I'll probably buy a trailer. I see no reason to chance breaking down a few hours from home just to be able to say "non-trailered".

Probably some better examples out there, just depends on what you consider "beeter". Better ET? More total HP? More HP on less boost? etc...

 

[DougNuts]

If you were going to rebuild a turbo motor or convert an N/A motor to turbo, it would be the head to get if you had the money, no?

Oh, this would be on a 100% street motor too.