Leaderboard

By now you might have noticed a major component is missing...? When the Z was delivered to us originally, the matching number L24 engine was barley secured in the engine bay - a couple of bolts and an occy strap! When we extracted it and I had a good look at what we had: Matching numbers L24 but the head was only secured with a couple of bolts, so I lifted it off. Everything 'looked' ok, but when I discussed the engine with Les at Les Collins Racing, he asked what the casting number was? 'E88' I said: 'That's a 260Z head' says Les. 'It should have the higher comp early E31 casting' Blast...! Another thing that was wrong and that I'd have rectify. The early E31 heads are REALLY hard to come by now, but undeterred I starting calling and emailing around - without much luck Then I called Paul Wolfe in QLD: "Yes I have one here, but it'll need a rebuild. And I could freight it down to you in a week or so if you want?" Yes! It arrived a week or so later expertly wrapped in carpet! Now I'm not stupid enough to think a 60yo aluminum Datsun cylinder is going to be ready to bolt on to an engine, I took it into Les Collins Racing and Les sent it off to Head Stud Developments to have it stripped, tanked, inspected & reported on. It wasn't good: the casting was soft, it had lots of water jacket corrosion, it was warped (typical), guides were shot, valve seats were shot, damaged threads... But it wasn't cracked anywhere, so that was tiny bit of good news. The quote to fix it from HSD was BIG dollars, but Les suggested that if I weld up the corrosion myself using his 3-Phase TIG, I'd save a lot of labour cost for Tony. So that's what I did - I spent a solid half day on the TIG welder in at LCR, welding up the coolant galleries and damaged thread bosses, heating the head back up with the Oxy/Act as required. Once finished, Les helped me Peen the welds down while the head still had temperature in it. But we weren't done yet! "Are you wanting to put a small cam grind in this?" Asked Les. I guess so? "OK, come with me - we have some porting to do." (!) Onto Les's porting table and he set about showing me how to basically port a cylinder head. Les ported an inlet & exhaust to show me, then left me to do the others(!) It was late when I finished... I'm still hugely appreciative of Les for allowing me to do this, because it's uncommon for him to show a non-engine builder how to port a head! The head then went back down to HSD for them to weave their magic: It was re-heat treated back to the required hardness, straightened, new hardend valve seats, new valves, new valve guides, threads repaired, new core plugs, coolant passages indexed and milled in, decked then hydrojet blasted. It was then returned to LCR to be reassembled: As close to a new head as we could get!