Stock Valve Ported Heads...THEY WORK!

[rick m]

I can clearly remember when I was 18 that I had to pick and choose between what I wanted to do on my first VW motors.  Looks were important. Stance. Tires. Paint. Interior...for date nights. Stereo...and oh yeah...the power to push it all around. Since transportation was a higher priority than being the fastest guy on the block but I wanted some performance too, I had to resort to where I could get the most bang for the buck.

An old porsche mechanic, kind of a mentor to me, (Mike Laurmann/very german), told me to follow the pattern of the early porsche motors and focus on cam, cylinder heads, carburetion and compression.  So, my early motors were small.  Like everyone, 87slip ins were tried until I found out I could get 88's, 90mm or 92mm nprs. Still, 87s were the least expensive because they could slip in. Heads...I simply could not afford to have FUMIO do mine at the time, so we managed to play around and do our own. Did they flow the same? Not! However, the few mods we made did work to our liking and our early mouse motors really were faster than most would expect.

I would have all the reciprocating parts, crank, rods, pistons, flywheel and pressure place all balanced. Cam selection would stay in the 280 to 286 duration area with lift not to exceed .500 (with rockers). I really liked 40Pll carbs and later stepped up to webers running some 44's (really to big) on my 1641.  Still, with a merged exhaust, full flowed case, home ported heads and a 1700lb street car, I could still get into the 15's on a stock tranny and have a great driver the rest of the week.  I was not looking to run 12's or 13's. I was happy with a snappy driver that would still get me every where I wanted to go and get over 25mpg.

All of this was done with ported stock valve heads.  I used the input of Jim Wild, a guy that was doing a lot of super vee stuff and had a lot of great input about smaller ports and little things that would make the heads work.  Attached is a really faded out old shot of one of my 1641 mouse motors without all the tin on it.  This was in the 70's.

The motor had a SIG ERSON Cam, Sig ERSON Rockers, 44 Webers, center pull linkage, full flow pump/filter, ported stock valve heads, 8 doweled F style forged VW crank (non-counterweighted but balanced assembly), 200mm flywheel and pressure plate, F&S clutch disc, merged 1 1/2" header, dog house cooler and shroud, BRS 383 centrifugal distributor.  The car was 100% driveable all the time, everywhere I wanted to go.

Sorry for the black and white picture. That was all the film I had at the time I was building this engine.

Rick M

[karl h]

the second engine i built also had stock heads, just a three angle and some port cleanup, no porting. i ran it with an early haltec setup and a 125 cam. it put out 95 hp on the engine dyno and was a blast to drive (1776, berg c/w crank, stock rods, TWM 44mm throttlebodies, home made merged). went 15.4 with a stock tranny on radials

[Fastbrit]

My first Weber motor was a 69 x 88, with Sig Erson cam, dual 40IDFs and stock dual-port heads. It hauled ass. Small ports mean high velocity, something which only a few head porters seem to appreciate today. That's why I like Jeff Denham's heads – he learnt from the God and continues the great work.

[rick m]

Keith,

You're right on about the port velocity. Air speed means a peppy motor. The engines are just big air pumps with spark plugs.  The more you get in, the faster you go. For street driving, port velocity is king. Who cares if the car can hit 8,500 if it can't to it quickly.  My heads on my 2100 that was in the teal 67 were heads Dean Lowry did for me and they were not that big. Yes, they were welded and ported but they weren't hogged out.

We only had 40mm X 35.5 valves in it too. Was a great driver and could still run high 13's with a very small cam.  I think a log of people overcam their motors for street driving.  JMO

Rick M

[nicolas]

thanks, i like that idea a lot.

me being a bit older then 18 can't relate completey with this, but let's say i have a familiarity with it anyway. i have spent a big amount on a 1776. and i think not many people can homebuild an engine like that, hell even not too many so called engineshops could do the job.
but for the squareback i opted to do some 'homecooking'. so with the little knowledge i have i took it upon myself to build a 1641. like Rick said, 87's just slip in and all the other stock parts can be used. i also opted for a stock crank, stock flywheel (was thinking about a lightened, but it's a squareback), stock rods (rebushed and checked), the cam is a reground unit something between a VZ 14 and a w100, i got this cheap, the plan was to go with a w100. stock reground lifters and all new bearings were used. so that came in fact pretty cheap. i didn't do any balancing (yet) as i didn't know if this would last a week... so i fitted it in the car and it ran OK, not great and not what i expected, but it ran. then i found out it was losing CR on number 3.
so now some more work is done as i started with a set off 040 heads to do some homeporting on them and redoing all the geometry again. i didn't do that the first time as i wasn't too shure how to do it. i read up on it and now (yesterday) i did just that. all is falling nicely into place now and i hope the engine will perform a bit better and last a long time.
the biggest benefit is besides the fact that you can have a bit more power is to do it all yourself. yes, like i said and like Rick said as well, it is not the fastest, best engine around, but it works and gets you from a to b just that bit faster.