New Vitesse Cylinder head

[MarkB]

Hi all
Need to get the head sorted before i finally put the engine back together. Really wanted to get the head modified from standard, increase the compression slightly etc. Just not sure where to get it done.  Had the car off the road for way to long and for speed and simplicity was going to get an off the shelf unleaded exchange unit. I may regret this later so before I commit thought I would ask for recomendations and your thoughts on a standard head verses modified for a fast road car that will one day be electronically injected using PI throttle bodies.

thanks

Mark

[Pete Lewis]

Firstly it will do many many miles without any unleaded exhaust inserts there is years of lead memory in the casting.
if work needs to be done then its something to consider
As you say its the start of a plan, but if this like many things doesnt get off the ground
there, s little point in modifying the head without other work on intakes and exhausts, camshafts
or its of little use
Pete

[Nick Jones]

I've always done my own.  Porting that is, I have to get the machine shop to do the unleaded inserts. The Vitesse made 120 bhp and the PI 148 bhp, both with Megasquirt management and standard 308778 cam so it may have had some effect.

I differ slightly from Pete on the seat inserts.  While I'm happy to run on seats with direct "lead experience" for as long as they take to start suffering recession (mine didn't in the 25k odd I ran on unleaded without inserts), I take the view that any seat disturbed by recutting or even just grinding in is much more likely to start suffering recession early so fitting inserts should form part of a head overhaul.

As to who to go to, Peter Burgess gets reliable reviews on the TR Register forum, perhaps more as a general tidy up than full blown "artisan" race heads, but I'm sure there are others.

Guides to DIY here
http://sideways-technologies.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic/690-diy-heads/  (Neil Collingwood wrote this one - he knows what he's doing!)
http://sideways-technologies.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic/6080-nicks-diy-head/  ( I wrote this when I did my PI head, but I was following Neils directions from above ref thread)

Nick

[Jonny-Jimbo]

For basic machine work on the engine I can thoroughly recommend Chesman Engineering in Coventry - top blokes that really know what they're going. I think Canley's gets the machine work done there, and we have had a lot done at work too.

[Slimboyfat]

Jonny_Jimbo wrote:

For basic machine work on the engine I can thoroughly recommend Chesman Engineering in Coventry - top blokes that really know what they're going. I think Canley's gets the machine work done there, and we have had a lot done at work too.

No we do not (and never have) used Chesman's.

[Jonny-Jimbo]

Sorry Dave, mis-information in my memory there. Apologies. No harm intended and hopefully not caused.

[JohnD]

If you fancy DiY,Vizard's book for "Triumphs over 1300cc" is available online: http://www.triumphexp.com/article/triumph/Tuning_Standard_Triumphs_Vizard.pdf

And his magnum opus "Theory and Practice of Cylinder Head Modification" (which offers specific advice on Triumphs) is avauilable on Amazon.
At £23, £29, and at £240!
Shum mishtake shurley!

John

[don cook1]

I used Kastner's book (too lazy to go upstairs and look for its title), its the thin red one. I also read Irving's Tuning for Speed. In reality all I did was to smooth out the steps where the port's milling came to a halt and blended it all together, as Kastner suggests by inserting an inlet valve down the inlet ports. I also, as per Kasner, took the sharp edges away from the combustion chamber.

Its worth paying attention to the inlet manifold: you can see daylight through 4 of the inlets so removing an internal wall on the two you can't can help. Someone did this in The Courier...Tony Lindsay-Dean??? On the photp you can see where I ground metal from (marked in blue), also a scribed ring where I machined the inlets to suit SU HS6s.