The valve cover came out beautiful! I had it done at Powder-coated.com. I really couldn’t be happier. Ivan did a great job and was very meticulous with the masking.

The acorn nuts are a bit small for my tastes and I’m working on rectifying that.

Just a few more items and I’m ready to install!

Made the filter housings today. They use the same wire mesh and oiled foam filters that I use on my other manifold. I’ve been very happy with the filtration from the foam and saw no reason to do anything different. The housing probably isn’t the best choice for power as it will disturb the air flow around the bell. Meh who cares. I like the look.

They still need finishing so the tooling marks from a well used CNC mill are visible.

I have a little boss on either side that will hold a set screw to hold them in place.

This started out as a 4″X8″X.75″ piece of 6061.

Word from Crane is I’ll have my cams by the end of next week.

Did an oil flow test and I’m getting excellent results up through the towers to the cam journals. The upper chain tensioner is getting plenty of flow as well.  I won’t know beyond that until I get the cams installed.

Closer every day!

Getting a little tight in there!

Got the plug tubes done. Decided to dry fit the rocker assembly. The nice thing about the K20 was the cylinder spacing was shorter than the L6. This meant things were easier to fit. In order to take up the space between the rockers and towers I decided to machine some washers out of 6061 aluminum in 3 thicknesses and I also purchased some .002″ shim washers.

Was bit tedious but really went pretty quickly. Here is a shot in application

Honda has around .005″ clearance so I kept it right around there.

Starting to run out of things to make until the cams get here.

I couldn’t find anything that I liked so I decided to machine my own. My build style is 70’s works look. I felt that an aluminum cap with knurling would fit the bill.

Here is a shot right after I finished the machine work.

Had a little too much bling for my taste so I threw it in the vibratory finisher for a few minutes.

Now it’s more to my liking. And since this will be my daily driver probably closer to how it will look in a month or so.  Gritty:)

As I said earlier I’m having it powder coated but I wanted a couple of shots of it raw aluminum. I think it looks great but I want to see what it looks like coated. For me to leave it raw would require a bit of work and then back to the foundry for shot peening again.  Not in the cards. The flange is o-ringed. A little more work but since I’m sure to have the cover off and on a bunch it made the most sense.

Everything fits really well. Intake casting is a little scruffy but that’s how it goes with prototypes.

I should have been a plumber:)

Should be ready to do oil pressure tests at the end of the week. I have a few more small items to work out but then I’m dead in the water without cams and a header.

sss

Getting the correct thread pitch figured out for the oil cap was tricky but it fits great. I also ran a mill across the firing order to try and correct for the short run. I’ll sand it up a bit to try and make it blend.

I’m setting up the plug wire boots for a Honda K24. This is one of the plug ends from Magnecore. Not crazy about the look but man do they seal well.

Very happy with the first pour. I had what’s called a “short run” where the metal didn’t flow all the way. It’s right at the firing order.  The 1 and 5 are barely there. The metal made it it just didn’t fill. There was a hole below it that they welded in for me.

I’ll sand the other numbers down to that level and see if I can make it work. Otherwise off they come.  I’ll modify the pattern so that future castings won’t have this issue.

The lettering is nice and crisp.

I’m going with Prismatic lite charcoal wrinkle with the lettering and ribs raw brushed aluminum.

For the second time 🙂

The head suds I’m using are ARP from a M50 BMW and they specify 85 lbs. 85 was too much for my tired old block and one of the studs sheared the threads off. I had to order a Timesert kit in to repair it.

There was quite a bit of debate about torquing on HybridZ and I settled into 65 lbs in three steps.

This abomination is the water outlet. It’s what I had to do in order to not have to make a separate timing cover pattern for this build. It’s setup for the stock nissan outlet and when it’s on it won’t look too bad. The new design is completely different. I run EDIS so the lack of distributer clearance is not an issue. There will be room on V2 for a distributor.

Upper timing gear went right on and my custom chain stop popped right out.  Ignore the grey silicone if you don’t mind:)  The outlet is o-ringed against the head and is bolted directly to the head so I’m not worried about leaking. Obviously I’ll have to rework the upper timing cover patten to clear the tensioner.

Behold my hardline prowess:)

3/4″ stainless .065 wall. Used my Hossfeld bender with a 1 7/8″ radius tube die. All those years of building complex pipe rail finally paid off:)

Clears the dip stick nicely.

Another angle because…Why not.

Unfortunately I have to cut it as I created a line trap in that I can’t remove the line without removing the pan or the head. I figured that was going to be the case but I kept it one piece as it makes for a better overall fit. I’m going to cut it up under the manifold on the horizontal section and clamp a piece of high temp hose between them.

No biggie.

Got the oil lines run. Love the rear one hate the front one but at this point I need to keep focus on the budget and to do the front the way I want it is money that can go elsewhere.  Plus when it’s in the car it will be hard to see anyway.

This oil entry will be on the back side of the head and will be a part of the casting. I had to use a bulkhead fitting on this build and this was the best place for it.

This will still be the front entry point in the new design but there will be more meat in the casting so I won’t have to use an adapter. And yes I still haven’t fixed the collision mark on that boss:)

Beauty shots for inspiration:)