http://www.raceeng.com/p-12385-iron-head2300-hi-flobare-ea.aspx (http://www.raceeng.com/p-12385-iron-head2300-hi-flobare-ea.aspx)
More Chinese CRAP! Listen you can hear them crackin in the distance..
Chinese or not i like to know how well they can actually hold up and how well they flow cant wait for bo to get his hands on one.
Curious if Wes actually got around to testing this head on the dyno. Anyone know?
Chris
So they do a bunch of work to beef up the deck and cam towers but judging by the pictures didn't bother to put a hardened exh. seats in it? Lame.
OhSix'
yes, wes ran the head saturday and heres his comments on it
ran the "Rhea" head (from Tim/Performance Masters) yesterday. I will post more data later when I get the .csv files. It certainly has potential, but Tim wanted me to post about the issues this head has, how much work it takes them to even make them "workable", and why Race Engineering has heads to sell in the first place. These are the reasons none have been for sale, from the original designer.
The castings are currently much too thin under the spring pads. If the pads are cut down to work with standard springs, the pads will be in the water jackets. The head I ran head offset locks, and still was installed too short.
The spark plugs require hand grinding in the chambers to allow them to be fully threaded into the chamber. The chambers themselves also have to be "massaged" by hand to get them near the turbo replacement 60cc's.
The HLA bores on the head he brought me were very sloppy, and the HLA's likely had at least 5 thou clearance. The bores will have to be "bushed" for proper operation.
On the dyno, I was happy with what the head did. My car produced 290 rwhp on Friday at 17 psi, peaking at about 6,000 rpm. The new head was line for line with the stocker (with a 5 angle valve job) until 5,500, then it started pulling away. Revving to 6,900, the peak was 32 rwhp above the baseline. Power was still climbing, and I believe it would have peaked around 7,500 rpm. With the HLA issues, I did not want to spin it that fast.
Ultimately, too much oil blead past the HLA's, and warm idle oil pressure was virtually "0." We pulled the head last night, and he took it back with him to bush the bores.
He wanted me to post these issues, so it is known why Race Engineering has these heads. The middle man got sick of Tim rejecting them (because they couldn't deliver with the promised quality) and decided to unload them to some one happy to pay for this level of quality.
There is certainly potential with the head. I was running with too little timing at low speeds (in expectation the chamber would be better than it was, at 6,000 rpm, it liked the same timing as the old head). The reason for this is likely how little the plug protrudes into the chamber (again, machining). Had I put the same timing in as I had ran with the factory head, it likely would have made more power for the entire pull.
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Welp looks like i got some time for RHEA to get all the bugs worked out of this head.
Pinturbo75:
Thanks so much for following this up, good information indeed!
Chris