No life (a.k.a. DattoMaster) 
Joined: 2008/10/10 22:02
From Melbourne Australia (and likely under the car)
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I'd even expand on that - going to bigger valves by themselves can in a lot of cases COST you some flow. You really have to tailor the bowl area and throat area (the region in the ports just above the valves/valve seats and the valve seats all to work properly with each other. This isn't particularly hard to do, but it is certainly more work than just fitting the valves and cutting the seats so they technically seal well.
As a non datsun example, with ford cleveland 2v heads, the 'standard' option used to be to fit 4v sized valves. But 9 times out of 10, esp if aiming for a broad power band, the clever porting guys could get more flow (and more ideal velocity) from 2v sized valves.
A similar thing is also the case with early holden v8 heads, for most streeters, running stock, or near stock valve sizes gets a better overall powerband and a quicker car. larger valves have their place but a fair bit has to be done to make it work.
The type of work I'm discussing, teh short turn/bowl/throat/valve seat area - is often called 'pocket porting'. It's not horrendously expensive and probably 80% of the total gains you can make as far as flow goes will come from this. And to get that last 10-20% will require far more extensive work (and whilst most porters can do pocket porting, not all of them can truly get the most out of any cylinder head - it takes a lot of time and trial and error, which also means money - to do this) anyhoo that last 10-20% of gains can easily cost 3-4 times as much as pocket porting. I'd make a reasonable case for anything short of a 'no expensive spared' racing effort - that pocket porting is as far as one should go.
Having said all that, presumably this is a turbo ca18 yes? In which case, whilst it might not sound as cool, you can make up for various shortcomings with just a little bit more boost. Certainly if you do headwork (and combine it all to work as a package and specifically to work in a boosted application) the results will be even better, but if the power/performance goal is not astronomically high, you will be able to achieve it with a stock head, if you catch my drift.
There are exceptions - holden 6s come to mind. Their heads flow pathetically - and you could practically take a poo in the ports and they'd flow better. On them you have to do a fair bit of work, even with a lot of boost, to make halfway decent power. For a streeter sure, you can just get an off the shelf YT head (if you can find one in good condition) which will do the trick, but for sub 10s in a relatively light lc/j torana, you have to spend a heck of a lot.
Posted on: 2013/7/15 9:47
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