Here's Anna removing the nuts from my stretched garbage ARP headstuds:





I'm working 8pm to ~2am tonight for a massive maintenance window for work, so I went into the office at 8am with the intention of leaving at noon and taking the rest of the afternoon off to get the head 90% of the way off and relax a little. Instead, I skipped lunch and got home at 5pm. Anna showed up in the garage in grubbies and my buddy chris (bananas on here) stopped by to lend a hand. 7:15 we had the head off, not bad for a noob eh?

Now I'm at work. Head goes to MAP tomorrow to swap for a core they had and (hopefully) have their stage3 port job done on. Plan is for Bob to do port cleanup in the exhaust and intake runners (no reshape, no CC work), new 5-angle valve job, reuse the stock valves but backcut the exhaust valves, and new valve stem seals. Gonna use oem MLS headgasket ( but w/o copper spray this time ), AMS/TMS L19 headstuds (thanks Shane@DB!) and one of the phenolic spacer gaskets on the intake manifold. She made 375whp on DB Performance's dyno (Dyno Dynamics, 1.0 CF) on pump gas only (395 w/alky) with rough tunes....the goal in the back of my mind is to creep up on (but prolly not break) 400whp with some real tuning on just pump gas and not push the boost too much to keep this thing nice and reliable as a daily driver.

Alky will be kept but I think I might add a .7mm jet (have a single 1.0mm jet now) lower down the UICP. Possibly switch back to 100% meth but 50/50 is a decent combo for me and the price is right!

Anyways, stay tuned!

 

I'm sorry dude, but we have installed over 500 sets of ARP headstuds and never had one stretch.

We have cars boosting up to 44psi.

You'll probably get aggravated and flame us, but just stating some facts.

I have cracked one standard ARP stud out of hundreds of sets and this was due to overtorquing the stud, instead of using the spec 75 ft-lbs with moly lube.

I would look for your problem elsewhere.

 

From what I've read, ARPs are great, unless you lift the head under boost. I had these installed at 30k miles (1x1 method), put another 30k miles on them and it started pushing coolant under high boost (30psi). Swapped HG, machined head, etc, been fine for 10k miles and now its pushing coolant again under high boost. At pump gas levels, it is fine unless I beat the living crap out of the car, then a bit of coolant will appear out the overflow. The damage is already done, maybe its the ARPs, maybe not. It's getting L19's and another nice safe tune now that I'm on the BBK and we'll see where we go.

No flaming, other ideas are welcome. I got a good deal on the L19's so I'm gonna run them and hopefully never think about it again. It's my DD and I drive it like I stole it.

TTP: copper spray or no copper spray? This seems to be another point of contention with people.

 

You have cut the head already, however blocks can warp also. All of our engine builds have their decks cut also. You might want to look there.

We used to use copper spray until one day I felt a warm sweet smelling fluid on my right foot.

Turns out the copper spray all washed through the coolant passages and all got jammed up in the heater core, clogging it. This is not a fun job to replace. Takes twice as long as a clutch.

So our recommendation is to get the mating surfaces flat and skip the copper spray.

 

Heh I never thought about that happening, that sucks. Well something didn't work last time so changing things up a bit but still gonna rock the stock bottom end. It'll be cleaned and checked for flatness and we'll just go from there

 

Here's the thing. ARP's will hold under most circumstances. If you have knock. They will stretch. If you beat the crap out of your car on a so so tune, or one that is on the ragged edge of knock all the time. You are going to have bad days where knock happens.

This will kill standard ARP's. Be glad they give out first. This is your warning to get your sh*t together with your tune, or how you drive.

Once you put the L19's in, this is not going to happen. They will hold and those pressure spikes will be absorbed by the rest of the rotating assembly. You'll either pound a bearing into oblivion or damage a piston. If it's severe enough, you'll shatter a pin or bend a rod.

Copper spray is a band aid on an imperfect surface. (bullet hole) If used it should be used extremely conservatively. I have never personally seen it wash out and end up in the cooling system. But if you use a lot - it will more than likely hurt you instead of help you.

No offense intended, but;
If you mercilessly beat the crap out of your car. No tune can really be safe enough. Pushing the head off is the least of what is coming down the line real soon considering that is a stock bottom end with miles starting to pile up. Abuse is abuse. As magical as the 4G63 is at making power, it's not going to take the same beating day in and day out - say a stock Z06 will at a similar power level.

I think we sometimes forget - at the end of the day, it is just a 2.0L making hundred(s) of HP in excess of mother mitsu's intentions. If you beat it, it will break.

 

^ Good stuff to know.

 

I did use copper spray last time, not as a bandaid but at the recommendation of others. Looking at the gasket, none is present now, which kinda tells me it all washed out somewhere

I do drive the car hard, but I wouldn't say I unmercifully beat on it. The car will be fully tuned on the new setup shortly after its back together, and I plan on continuing to drive it daily on just pump gas and flip on the alky when need be Mapswitching FTW!

 

Why flip on the meth and not run it all the time?

This is another thing I cannot understand. If you have one of the progressive controllers (basically anything other than an on off switch) Why exactly do you want to drive the car around without meth? What is the benefit for you? I don't believe methanol is very expensive to run, especially in a 50/50 ratio like you mentioned above for the price being right. (And personally I agree as this is the mixture I run)

But why not have it all the time? It's a nice safety blanket for even when you roll into partial boost. Keeps temps down, and can be effective - if tuned properly - basically any time it is on even at part throttle, and small quantities of meth.

I never understood the necessity of the map switching for meth injection? (E85 yes) Wouldn't you want the benefits of meth all the time? For normal driving, you should be mostly out of boost anyway right? What do you need to actually turn the methanol inj OFF for?

Again, not trying to be the douche nozzle in your Sunday picnic, I just don't personally understand the need for turning it off, but I see it EVERYWHERE on the forum like it is such a great helpful feature. Will you elaborate?

 

Sure will! Tons and tons of reasons

Reason number one for mapswitching is safety. It is the method by which you can have a major issue with your alky kit and keep your car from 'sploding! I run 30psi *almost* daily with the alky setup. Check out this thread I wrote using this system to its full potential (its a sticky in the alky section for future ref):

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/wa...ther-last.html

Running alky is addictive, and hard to turn off! Sometimes however, I don't need it on or don't want it on. I have a tendency to take a lot of work calls, and let's face it, 370wtq while talking to a client or my mom/dad is a bit much. I have the HFS-1 and it is not a progressive system, it is on/off. Normally this is not an issue, but sometimes while casually driving it'll flip on during part-throttle, and combined with the 30psi spike the car is a little nuts (insane, no). There's also this part of me that likes having a dr. jeckle and mr. hyde car; at the flick of a button I get +40whp/+50wtq.

Next, I live in MN. Sometimes, just sometimes it gets to be freaking cold here, like -25°F for like 2 weeks straight. When its that cold, just starting and driving the car can be hard enough on the car, pushing tons of boost and alky/water through it just doesn't always seem like a good idea. Not that I don't do it mind you, but again a good time for dr. jeckle to just be crawling through the snow and ice....even with bishin snow tires there's not tons of tracton. That, and doing huge powerslides and donuts in mall parking lots after a fresh snow would just drain the alky tank in no time!

Lastly, I guess there is the last month and a half. I made just about 400whp/373wtq on a non-finished tune with the car at our spring dyno day, and the car was literally puking out a quart of coolant each dyno pull. On pump gas the car made 375whp/323wtq and didn't push an ounce of coolant. Obviously there was a problem. So, I made plans to do *this* project, and continued to drive the car get to work and back I know the whole mapswitching/conservative thing seemed a little pu$$y above, but you know as well as I do that 375whp every day for a month is WAY better than 395whp for zero days in a month, right?

In the meantime I've been on MAP's schedule for porting, ordered parts, did my brakes, blah blah blah and just been having a good time with the car: sunroof open, windows down, music blaring--it's SUMMER! It's not -25°F now, it's +80 and beautiful.

Anyways, long-winded, but I hope I answered your question I have friends that run 32psi daily on their cars daily on E85 (tons around here, but not so much for me), and they will openly admit that they don't go WOT on a regular basis and kinda take it easy on their cars most of the time. That's just not for me. I like to rip with my evo, and 375whp on a dyno dynamics, well that's a damn fun car, even if it does have a blown headgasket

 

wow ok now that that question is answered, time for the next novel!

Thanks Hughes(s2kracka) and Jim(TalonEvo) for coming over and helping me finish prep everything for the head to go back on! I dropped off my stock head at MAP on Saturday and porting guru Bob@MAP had already started on my core. I think I got on their schedule about 5-6 weeks ago to make this happen, and through diligent pings over IM and in person visits (had to buy parts for this project as well as brakes) everything seems to have come together. Anyways, picked up my head today after work and zzzzomg it looks pretty decent! I wasn't after a super insane port job, just a nice basic one and I am quite impressed. On saturday I saw it with the valves out and now I'm kicking myself for not taking pics.

When bob disassembled my stock head he discovered that ALL BUT THREE of my valvestem seals were kaput and looked like this:


So, oil burning issue....CHECK! Nothing huge but hopefully this will solve it.

The next detail that was unexpected but very thoughtful was the EGR port plug. This will keep all exhaust gasses from reaching my intake manifold and combined with my phenolic spacer IM gasket should keep the IM nice and cool. Not a biggie with the alky but def nice on straight pump gas.


Here's the phenolic spacer (notice anything funny? I didn't until later in the evening):


And finally, some shots of the portwork. Any pics where you can see studs around the port will be on the exhaust side.


exhaust


intake



Jim cleaned the block deck since he owed me a favor and the damn punk got lucky; the block was very easy to clean, there was not much to do! Everything was nice and level, very nice except for one worry-some spot:


I'm thinking this will be sealed nice by the new gasket but still worries me slightly. This is NOT where the HG blew either time, so not sure.

Anyways, I went to bolt the IM on and realized that I had gotten a phenolic spacer for a 2G, not an evo I chalked it up to karma telling me to not stress about the car, so we seated the new AMS/TMS L19's in place and called it a night. Head is fully assembled with my GSC beehive springs and Kelford 272's strapped in and ready to rock, exhaust mani bolted on, engine bay cleaned up. Just gotta get new gasket and bolt up the IM and drop the head back onto the block. I was hoping for as little downtime as possible, but I figure I'm still within that window, considering the changes being done.

 

Definitely nice port work on Bob @ MAP's part. The wait and their scheduling definitely sucks, but the porting is always top notch.

 

After discovering the issue with the distributor Chris dug through some boxes and discovered the correct spacer!



I got home, scarfed some nummy greek food and got to it. bolted up intake manifold, threw the head on (THANKS AGAIN HUGHES!), and ran into a quick roadblock.


Last night I had the new L19's installed:


I ended up having to pull one of them back out once the head was on b/c the washers are so big it got bound up on the spring.

Once that was sorted, torqued the L19's to 91 ft-lbs, hooked up the cam gears, and put the valve cover on. Hughes had to take off just as Jim showed up to offer me moral support. I was gonna be done at this point but Anna was doing other stuff so I just kept my head down and buttoned everything back up! Filled the coolant and ran some o'reily's 10w30 oil through it for a few minutes, drained it, changed oil filter, filled with Mobil1 10w30 and started it again to make sure all was well. While the oil was draining I did a quick boost leak test and discovered that I might have ripped one of the injector seals when it popped in (felt a tish of a pop as it seated ). So, I'll check that out tomorrow and finish putting the heat shields and whatnot on.



Thanks again for all those who helped me, even those who didn't help this time around but helped me last time. Definitely not afraid to do a HG again, just hopefully its not on this car!

 

The on/off non-progressive controller is reason enough. That doesn't sound like fun. And makes me thankful I installed a kit with a progressive controller.

I will go read your thread now.


Hopefully everything is good now and you can continue enjoying the car.

 

What kit do you have? Progressive kits are generally bad because they do not maintain pressure in the line and the when fluid starts to flow it does not maintain a consistent spray pattern. Then, when you let off, it continues to flow and 'dribble' out as the line empties. Not exactly high tech and not what I want. I had an SMC kit for a year. Yes it gets the job done but after realizing how archaic it was, I saved up and went Aquamist.