N54 head work
- Thread starter fmorelli
- Start date
Our guy is busy getting this done, but I'm planning to invite him to Spoolstreet so he can talk about stuff like that with us.
Filippo
Last edited:
Just a quick update:
Filippo
- we're waiting on final polishing of the intake and exhaust ports
- a bit of bowl cleanup
- back of valve tulips smoothed and polished.
- An N54 fixture is being fabricated as well so this can hit the superflow bench. Gee looks like the local shop has all kinds of V8 fixtures but no N54 ... go figure lol
Filippo
My statement are relative to the schrick high lift cams, so when I say less lift and less duration I mean "less than the schrick high lift cams."
As for your statement, adding lift (same duration) DOES have the ability to increase filling/exhausting even if the flow of the head has plateaued. This is because the time the valve is open at its max flow is longer. This obviously assumes you didnt just add to the peak and leave the ramp rate the same.
Your statement on duration makes alot of assumptions to alot of variables. A flowbench number cant tell you ideal duration, nor can it show you performance of centerlines and overlap throughout the rpm range at different engine efficiencies.
Hi everybody.. my first official post on here.. My names Bernie Foss.. I am the one porting the head pictured here for Filippo, i just got back from a huge cross country vacation..
on the divider its not on this picture but the inner divider is narrower by half the size pictured an also has not a sharp edge but has a directed flow out left and right of each port make sense/? its smooth rounded an not a flat edge. ill get updated pics of that so you can see in the next day or two.
i will be polishing the hell out of it an will update pics to filippo within the week an hope to have the fixture for flow bench mid next week and head then will be sent to Goodwin Competition a local company who happens to do a lot of the cnc porting for ams and is very well known around here for making some 100k big supercharged boat engines..
Last edited:
Honestly great question.
when you punch a hole through a 2300$ big block head.. its not a good day.. i have lots of tools to help measure inside diamters of each so i can do my best to match them all in sizing.. now when it comes to too much.. these heads look like you can truly go to town on them. and take a lot of material out.. but we have questions and i need to do a little research b4 i do what i want to do to my next personal head. but need less to say i am going to use a flat turbo manifold.. have the area around the exhaust manifold mating surface filled in at my father in laws work. we are going to port match the manifold to exhaust flange and then i will have manifold built off my port matched head.. my father in law has been doing this his entire life and has so much knowledge and questions on the n54 head so im kinda following him on the next one an we want to see what the flow bench says.. i feel as he does and we think this will increase air velocity on the exhaust side a lot. and also maximize flow as it truly should not have any real restrictions with everything being smooth streamlined in from intake to out of exhaust.. iono if anyone else has really port matched the manifold like we intend too.. but thats what going to happen to the head i am starting once this one his goodwin for flownbench.
hopefully it will be more then this n53 head data i wont lie.. i really intent to see the true max of the n54 head.. how much is too much.. wheres the holes at ect.. i have a junk head i dropped off at a local machine shop to have it cut into 3 parts so we can get a better hand on idea.
I am curious how much cheaper it is to port a head and buy cams vs buying a n53 head . I'm getting so fed up with my n54 I am thinking of turning into a n53 lmao. But really its gonna be cold soon so I am thinking of just changing things up. If I do a single exhaust and a head I should get decent power. I would assume exhaust gets more important on a better flowing head as well correct ?
I can help answer some of that. First off with an N53 head you are also going to be doing a different exhaust manifold. Omar (@Hydra Performance) can give you pricing - I won't pass along what I was told as I don't know how his price may vary given supply, what you need, etc. But the exhaust manifold is sort of the long poll in the tent, as I understand it. When I ordered my HP650s from Omar, I could have ordered the N53 head. I was just not ready to commit to doing the head at that point. Over the months, the whole head thing kept bugging me (I just think the N54 head is woefully out of spec for higher HP builds - higher being like twice the factory spec) ... everybody seems to push PSI to the moon with all the downstream issues that come with that.
There are few folks that have been playing with N54 head porting, at least in the USA. I'm familiar with folks in other parts of the world doing it. I spoke to a number of people, and a variety of friends in the business. I'd rather not get into those details publicly, but if someone is looking to get work done elsewhere than the list below, I'm glad to discuss details in PM.
For us USA guys as I see it -
)
Anyway once Bernie's work is done and flowed, the head will come back from Wisconsin. @barry@3DM and I will build it up once Simon, our machine shop wizard in Virginia does his thing.
Part of the reason I started this thread was ... well, go find other "head" threads for the N54. Yeah ... zip, except for what VTT has shared with their Rebello work and some comparison testing. We are also flowing the head so we can have some hard numbers for comparison versus just, "awww shucks that looks nice."
Just as a reminder, Bernie is also working the valve tulips. We are sticking with the stock valvetrain (well, aside from the low-lift Schrick cams) as we didn't see a reason to update valves and springs for my setup. Part of my hope, with the work being done, is that it will also further reduce the need for walnut blasting. In our case the intakes will be polished (no need for mixing potions as its a DI fueler) and that, combined with the larger ports and PCV block should really help out.
As for cams, I don't know how much they provide in the equation. VTT seem to think it was a nominal benefit on a ported N54. I got a good deal on the Schricks so I went for it. Point being, if cost is a concern, you can probably run a port with completely stock valvetrain and be on shorter investment.
For pricing on hand-ported N54 headwork, you can PM Bernie (@ThatBoostedLifestyle) directly. VTT has their pricing published for Rebello CNC porting. A PM to Omar gets you N53 pricing.
Filippo
There are few folks that have been playing with N54 head porting, at least in the USA. I'm familiar with folks in other parts of the world doing it. I spoke to a number of people, and a variety of friends in the business. I'd rather not get into those details publicly, but if someone is looking to get work done elsewhere than the list below, I'm glad to discuss details in PM.
For us USA guys as I see it -
- Order an N53 head from Omar, along with the exhaust manifold (and possibly turbo) setup you need
- Go to Rebello/VTT that will hand port an N54 head, and Rebello is top shelf
- Bernie (@ThatBoostedLifestyle) who has N54 specific experience.
)Anyway once Bernie's work is done and flowed, the head will come back from Wisconsin. @barry@3DM and I will build it up once Simon, our machine shop wizard in Virginia does his thing.
Part of the reason I started this thread was ... well, go find other "head" threads for the N54. Yeah ... zip, except for what VTT has shared with their Rebello work and some comparison testing. We are also flowing the head so we can have some hard numbers for comparison versus just, "awww shucks that looks nice."
Just as a reminder, Bernie is also working the valve tulips. We are sticking with the stock valvetrain (well, aside from the low-lift Schrick cams) as we didn't see a reason to update valves and springs for my setup. Part of my hope, with the work being done, is that it will also further reduce the need for walnut blasting. In our case the intakes will be polished (no need for mixing potions as its a DI fueler) and that, combined with the larger ports and PCV block should really help out.
As for cams, I don't know how much they provide in the equation. VTT seem to think it was a nominal benefit on a ported N54. I got a good deal on the Schricks so I went for it. Point being, if cost is a concern, you can probably run a port with completely stock valvetrain and be on shorter investment.
For pricing on hand-ported N54 headwork, you can PM Bernie (@ThatBoostedLifestyle) directly. VTT has their pricing published for Rebello CNC porting. A PM to Omar gets you N53 pricing.
Filippo
Last edited:
Rebello ports all our heads by hand with a guy who has been porting Inline 6 heads for the better part of 30 years. We feel CNC porting while easier, and quicker if you have the equipment does not produce as high quality a product as hand porting. Why? Its CNC so it has to be the same every time? Well yes, the program is the same, but when is the last time you set two cast pieces side by side and saw zero difference. Every casting is slightly different meaning the CNC cannot take into account these differences. So while the program is the same, the heads are not.
nice to hear that they hand port as well. its truly relaxing to me to throw in head phones and forget the last 6-8 hours clean up a head/intake or whatever i am working on. ive been porting since 2006 as i was lucky to have a mentor from Kroyer racing engines in las vegas... Dannillo De Borja from manila who was an amazing mentor for almost 10 years. building cars has always been a huge part of my life and hopefully we see better numbers then others that have been done and flowed as i truly feel like there is some room for improvement in them..
My bad, @Chris@VargasTurboTech. For some reason I had it in my mind that Rebello had done CNC profiles for the N54. Nonetheless Rebello is Rebello
. So if you guys haven't done it I think it is safe to say that no one has a CNC option for the N54 (just to close out that issue). I'm pretty sure of this as I covered bases with others, prior.I also agree on CNC. Great for repeatability when you have a super well-known dialed in profile. But someone well experienced in porting will dot the i's and cross the t's on details on top of their knowledge of how to approach the head and prep it for its application.
Filippo
Only one that might be CNC'd I would guess is vac.
Interested to see the results as I have a spare head lying around. I keep telling myself do not spend any more and just buy a c8 but it is fun to push things.
That’s the ticket right there. This platform becomes a bigger turd everyday.
Btw, as a mfg process owner for an aerospace company, I’m going to have to disagree with the notion that anything done by hand is better, unless there are machine/tool constraints that allow a person to do something the machine can’t. I am also going to disagree with the idea of head castings being so far out from one another that a CNC program wouldn’t cover the range of that casting line. BMW seems to be able to CNC cut and drill the castings just fine...
Machines are great, when operated by people with a clue, when running highly developed profiles that ... surprise surpise ... were figured out by someone with serious chops. Digital ALWAYS follows analog: never the other way around. So an excellent CNC profile is a) iterative, b) iterative, and c) iterative until it is proven very good. ESPECIALLY on a complex set of surfaces (e.g. compound curves) and access constraints like a head. Tool path has got to be a bitch.
So it's not even that someone has to have figured out the CNC program for an N54, but that they've actually done them enough to know that their program is worth a shit. Iteration and evolution are core to the rigor of meeting quality goals and then predictability to repetitively achieving those quality goals.
Until that exists, a random CNC program for an N54 head is going to get spanked by a season vet working with hand tools.
Filippo
So it's not even that someone has to have figured out the CNC program for an N54, but that they've actually done them enough to know that their program is worth a shit. Iteration and evolution are core to the rigor of meeting quality goals and then predictability to repetitively achieving those quality goals.
Until that exists, a random CNC program for an N54 head is going to get spanked by a season vet working with hand tools.
Filippo
Last edited:
Ok ... editing this response. VAC says they do it with CNC: http://www.vacmotorsports.com/news/...r-head-service-135i-335i-535i-1483338278.html
Filippo
Last edited:
You’re making a lot of assumptions about the differences in knowledge between someone who does something by hand and someone who uses an automated machine. Tool paths are actually not difficult to create. The post processor for the machine takes care of all of that in the machine environment within the CAD software. If You were going to CNC port a head, that you didn’t already have a blueprint for, you would 3D scan it and cut it up so that you had a model and thicknesses to work with so you don’t remove too much material or have tool/machine collisions. You can also use part probing on the machine to set planes and find the center of bores to deform the tool path for less than ideal setups. Long story short, I’ve hand ported before (at a very amateur level for an engine building class) and created models, programs, and processes for hundreds of different parts on CNC equipment and it is nowhere near the black magic it appears you think it is.
Edit: I will give you that the ROI for a business to develop multiple stages of CNC’d head work options for the N54 is the most likely culprit for why you wouldn’t see it out there in industry. The best chance the N54 would have is if someone that worked at/owned a company that already provided this type of service for other platforms did this on their own to benefit themselves and then offered it because they had all the programs already.
Edit edit: just saw your VAC uses CNC edit. So, that totally supports my above edit.
Last edited:
My assumptions come from a variety of experiences where control devices operating cutting machines do not necessarily produce superb results. The base knowledge of how to get power out of a head is regardless of whether done by hand or by machine - and then bearing out that you've achieved that objective.
It's one thing to port a head for poets ... by hand ... or by machine. It's another thing to be a stud at it. Problem is art is science with too many variables. What you call black magic, I call complexity. Can someone program a solution? Sure. Can someone program an superb solution? Sure, with iteration and lots of experience. Just because something is digital doesn't make it great. Digital follows analog.
Sorry I used tool path as short hand to say that, access paths for tools seems to me to be tricky business on a head. Plenty of heads get CNC'd - I'm just saying I imagine that's not simple, and the lack of development iteration results from a lack of market which would drive that kind of development maturity.
Filippo
It's one thing to port a head for poets ... by hand ... or by machine. It's another thing to be a stud at it. Problem is art is science with too many variables. What you call black magic, I call complexity. Can someone program a solution? Sure. Can someone program an superb solution? Sure, with iteration and lots of experience. Just because something is digital doesn't make it great. Digital follows analog.
Sorry I used tool path as short hand to say that, access paths for tools seems to me to be tricky business on a head. Plenty of heads get CNC'd - I'm just saying I imagine that's not simple, and the lack of development iteration results from a lack of market which would drive that kind of development maturity.
Filippo
