Head Advice

[jonb_5 6]

Hi

 

I am planning in taking the head off of my 1.6 GTi to give it a skim and just generally clean it up etc.

 

Does anyone have any advice whether this would be worth while or I would be better putting a different head back on?

 

I am also upgrading to Webber 45's as I cannot afford throttle bodies and will probably upgrade the cam, any ideas on this?

 

The car is used purely for hill climbing so not concerned too much about drive ability on the road etc.

 

Thanks

 

Jon

[joris_andriesse 8]

2.0 8v head. Need quite a scim to get the right compression and propably some work to get the inlet ports right (depends on which inlet manifold you take for the Webers), but it's worth it.

[pug_ham 242 3 Cars]

A skim on a standard head is advisable.

 

If its never been touched since the engine was built, a full clean up / rebuild with valve stem seals & check exhaust valve guides as they wear badly iirc will bring back some lost performance.

 

The XU10 head above needs more work than just a skim, the inlet ports are a different shape to the XU5/9 inlet & need work to reshape them to suit the inlet, even for carbs afaik.

 

They do flow better & have bigger inlet valves but the gain is small tbh & added expense of finding a good one can make it quite a pita as really any s/h head will be better once refurbished before use.

 

Cam wise, as you are swapping to webbers you have a wide choice dependant on how far you want to take it but bear in mind the bottom end is only good to just over 7k before you need to spend money on uprated parts for reliability.

 

g

[Baz 421]

While you're there you could find a played with head perhaps and as it's purely a 'toy' a big cam won't hurt, although you won't get the best out of a large one unless you up the compression etc too.

 

If you're going hillclimbing you probably won't be allowed to run an Xu10 head, in the lower production classes anyway.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Baz