I have yet to see PPR deliver any of their products to a customer. Until I see otherwise they're getting filed in the same vaporware vender folder as Xtreme Tunas.

 

Yea true, SME head is fitted to the auto gruppen evo IX. So they are real and in the field at least and working well.

 

This is the dilemma these days and if your head is junk or un useable finding a head in good shape will cost a bit also. Same with blocks hard to find useable blocks now. By the time you research and find one of each then pay for it your well on your way to a billet one.

 

I did talk with Dart at PRI last year about an aftermarket cast 4G block and they said they received a lot of inquiries about doing it. IMO something like that would only really gain traction for this platform if the block was priced under $3500, ideally under $3k.

As for heads, that's something that can be done but would require the right group of people to pony up kicking it off or convincing the right company. I know 4Piston sells aftermarket cast K and F heads. I'm pretty sure they're Endyn castings, not sure if 4P is a middleman for that or if they bought the rights to the castings from Endyn but it's living proof that an aftermarket sport compact head can be done and sold for close to what we're paying for new bare heads now ($2k-2500).

 

A $2500 billet head would be amazing.

People are asking for 2k for mivec heads.

 

I would honestly prefer a cast head. It's hard to do good cooling jackets with billet. Also the thermal expansion on 6061 is significantly higher compared to most common sand casting alloys like A356 or A357 so all your clearances in the head are going to open up at temp which will make the head a bigger user of the oil supply. I would also swag a guess that a billet head may require regular retightening of head studs after a certain amount of heat cycles.

The big downside to castings is core shift, but with most aftermarket castings the molds aren't being used hundreds of thousands or millions of times and they're generally held to tighter tolerances that high volume OE stuff so core shift is pretty minimal.

 

Youve mentioned that before, but per the material specifications cast vs wrought is less than 10% difference. Something like 12 vs 13 uin/in.

 

A356 vs 6061 is a tad over 10% difference in thermal expansion (mainly because of the silicone content in A356), but 10% on clearances that are under a thou from the factory is a lot. By no means am I saying that a billet head won't work, I just don't really see any upsides to it over a proper casting. At the end of the day both are going to be better than a 20+ year old head with a questionable history.

 

Well the benefit is tooling vs part cost of course. Id be 100% on board for a modern OEM casting though, Im just not sure any one is going to front the tooling cost to get a casting kicked off.

Do we know who does the castings for the honda guys? I could reach out and see what can be done.

 

I'm 90% sure 4P is using Endyn castings. Endyn was bought by Mast Motorsports a few years ago and Mast says they cast their own heads so that's where I would start.

 

The 4Piston website says they're the distributor for Endyn castings, so it looks like you're right.



Would be great if 4Piston could work with Endyn to get it done.

 

Aftermarket cast heads already exist. SME Do them.

 

The SME head converts the valvetrain to a cam over bucket, which means you have no options for cams other than what they offer. Same goes for buckets and valves. It's a novel idea but not what I would want to be using for a race engine, especially coming from a company who doesn't even have a website for their products. Who knows how easy or hard it is to get ahold of them for replacement parts.

 

They do have a website:

https://smemotor.se/

Auto-Gruppen seem to be doing fine with their head installed? Setting lap record after lap record. They were multiple seconds faster than the audi R8 1:1 team record the other week.

 

Good to know they have a site.

The issue still stands that no standard valvetrain parts fit that head. It's a cool idea and I'm sure it works fine, but having lots of bespoke moving parts is a big turn off.