Hopefully my last thread: HEEELLLP!

[Trav]

What about grabbing a pair of lower mile heads from the bone yard and giving them to the machine shop? These engines are plentiful and cheap. They probably wont part out a low mile SC engine for a top end swap but a normally aspirated one they usually will.

 

[R18Civic]

Closest junkyard is 45-50 miles away and last time I was there they only had 3 Series III motors in the yard. Given these heads are so prone to cracking I’m happy paying 600 over numerous trips to the junkyard along with gas in this Dakota I borrowed. Add the cost of having numerous sets of heads magna-fluxed I confident purchasing the recon heads was the best way to go.

 

[Trav]

In that case I would buy them like you said, here we have a lot of yards with these engines still in the bodies.

 

[R18Civic]

Well I'm glad I went with reconditioned heads. I'm also slightly sad I didn't start running 93 until about 8 months after my rocker arm install.

Got the valves out of the old head to re-use the springs and the crack between valves on Cyl #1 extends behind and INTO the exhaust valve seat. Same hairline crack and as far as I'm concerned it could've only been caused pre-detonation. Just glad I didn't burn an exhaust valve or crack a piston.

I've got pretty much everything ready, Spent about a 90 minutes cleaning all gunk from the upper intake manifold, another hour on chasing all bolts for the upper and lower intake manifolds to get old loctite off along with chasing the LIM threads.

I can find a kit with a long enough bit to clean out my block threads. I'm just hoping one of the longer bolts I cleaned up will get gunk out of there. If I saw correctly the sealer is already on the new bolts and the manual doesn't call for any loctite so the bolt should do the trick.

 

[R18Civic]

Welp I'm going with junkyard heads. Ordered the recon heads and they arrived yesterday. Open the box, take out the packaging and run out to the garage with them smiling ear to ear. Later I decided I'd better check them over just in case and they're no good. All mating surfaces and shiny as can be, silver spray paint gives it a nice little touch but the corners of the CC's on both heads have dings in them. I found a rust spot that was missed on the mating surface somehow and one head looks as if it was dragged across and abrasive surface. Numerous scratches and even a couple I can catch my thumb nail in. Definitely couldn't have been caused by the shipping. Whoever packaged them was careless or it may have happened when they installed the #105 springs.

Either way I'm sending them back for a refund. I looked junkyard an hour out and they only charge $30 for iron heads so I'll grab both sets from their newest 3800s and bring em back to be checked out to see which ones are best suited to be put on my vehicle.