Practical Engine Building: Step 8: Cylinder Head Assembly
Watch This Course
$199 USD $99.50 USD
-OR-
Or
8 easy payments of only $12.44
Instant access. Easy checkout. No fees.
Step 8: Cylinder Head Assembly
32.33
| 00:00 | - For the next step of our process, we're going to assemble our cylinder head ready to fit it onto our engine short block. |
| 00:06 | And there are a few different steps that make up this part of our process. |
| 00:11 | I'll just outline them broadly here. |
| 00:13 | We're going to begin by refitting the plugs for the oil galleries, making sure to do this is important, otherwise you're going to end up with a huge oil leak when it comes to start the engine for the first time. |
| 00:24 | We're then going to fit a new set of valve guide seals. |
| 00:26 | In our case we're using a set of aftermarket valve guide seals from Supertech. |
| 00:31 | Important to note with these that they are different from the intake to the exhaust side so really critical to make sure we are getting these around the right way. |
| 00:39 | We can then go ahead and fit our new Ferrea 1 mm oversize stainless steel valves for the intake and the exhaust and as part of this, we'll be fitting our GSC Power Division beehive valve springs and titanium retainers. |
| 00:53 | Now an important part with these valve springs is just to understand the installed height of the spring. |
| 00:59 | So we've got one of those here and that installed height is simply the height when the valve is closed and everything is installed, between the underside of the titanium retainer and the top side of the spring base. |
| 01:12 | Now the installed height will in turn affect the spring pressure and we need to make sure that the spring pressure, or the pressure that the spring is applying to the valve when it's seated is in the right range, otherwise we may lose control of the valve, particularly at high RPM with more aggressive cams. |
| 01:31 | GSC make this really easy as they have an online calculator, we just need to take a few measurements from the cylinder head, enter those measurements into the online calculator and it'll spit out the installed height of the valve spring. |
| 01:44 | In our case, we've already gone ahead and done this and we know that the valve spring installed height is correct so there's no further work to do. |
| 01:52 | I'll be skipping over the actual measurement process but it is straightforward. |
| 01:56 | It is important to check though because if your valve spring installed height is incorrect, you may need to shim the underside of the spring base to get that into the ballpark of where you need it to be. |
| 02:08 | And the valve spring manufacturer as well as your cam manufacturer will be able to guide you there on what installed height and hence spring pressure is required. |
| 02:16 | Alright let's get started now and as I mentioned, the first part here is going to be reinstalling our little blanking plugs for the oil galleries. |
| 02:24 | In order to seal this, I am going to be using a Loctite product, this is Loctite 567, this is a PTFE thread sealant so we don't need a lot of this, I'm just going to apply a small amount near to the end of the threads here and we don't really want that extending past the threads, otherwise it's going to end up in the oil gallery itself. |
| 02:45 | We can now take an allen key here and we can reinstall these. |
| 02:50 | So we've got 4 on the end of the head, let's just get our first one started here. |
| 02:58 | Alright we've got that started, now these plugs are actually tapered so what we'll find is as we wind them in, they do tighten up. |
| 03:06 | They don't require a huge amount of force here and we're really just winding those in until they're reasonably tight and that thread sealant's going to do the job of sealing those plugs so we're not going to have any leaks. |
| 03:20 | We'll now go ahead and we'll install the remaining 4 plugs. |
| 03:34 | OK we've got the 4 plugs installed in the end of the head, we've got one more on the intake side of the head here facing me, I'm just going to complete the installation of that one as well right now. |
| 03:49 | Alright next up we've got our valve guide seals and we're going to install those, we've got the intake side here facing me so we're going to start with the intake valve guide seals, we'll just take those out of their little pack here and while there are specific tools for installing and removing valve guide seals, if you don't have the correct tool available, the easiest solution I've found is just to find a long reach socket or tube socket that's a nice snug fit over the actual valve guide seal itself. |
| 04:19 | Something that's going to sit on the outside diameter of the valve guide seal and we can use that just to gently tap the valve guide seal into place using a plastic mallet. |
| 04:28 | And before we go ahead and install these, what I'm going to do is just give the inside of the valve guide seal a little bit of lubrication, this will just help it slip into place without any risk of tearing and we can now get that just fitted into location, we'll start at the front side of the head here, get it into location approximately by hand, going to take our socket and our little plastic mallet and we'll just get that located, make sure that it is nice and square and we are working in line with the valve guide and we can just tap that gently into place. |
| 05:10 | Alright we've got that in place, and I should actually mention here, this isn't a problem with the 4G63 cylinder head but there are some cylinder heads where you won't actually be able to install and remove the spring seat with the valve guide seal in place and that can be an expensive mistake if you've gone through and installed all of your valve guide seals just to find that you need to remove them again to fit the spring seats so as I've mentioned, in this case with the 4G63 the hole through the centre of the spring seat is large enough, we can install these with those guide seals in place so it's not an issue. |
| 05:42 | I'm going to go ahead now and install the remaining valve guide seals. |
| 06:12 | Altight we've got all of our intake valve guide seals now fitted, tapped down gently into place, we're going to flip the head around and repeat the process with our exhaust valve guide seals. |
| 06:22 | Now as I mentioned, they are different from the intake to the exhaust side and in the case of these Supertech valve guide seals, the brown colour is the intake valve guide seal, the exhaust valve guide seals are blue in colour so it's really easy to distinguish, even if they are out of their pack so let's flip the head around and we'll continue and repeat that process on the exhaust side. |
| 07:04 | Now that we've got all of our valve guide seals fitted, the next step is to go through and fit our valves, our valve springs, retainers and our locks to keep everything in place. |
| 07:13 | This is a bit of a fiddly process, we have demonstrated it in the body of the course and it does take a little bit of testing to basically develop a strategy that's going to be comfortable and work well for you. |
| 07:25 | I also tend to find that for the first one or two valves, it does get a little bit fiddly and then once you develop that strategy it becomes a lot easier. |
| 07:34 | For me, rather than trying to do this with the head sitting here where we can't get to the head of the valve, what I'm going to do is just relocate the head and flip it on its side and this will give me nice easy access to both sides of the valve and in order to do this, I'm also going to support the head with a block of wood just to keep it nice and stable and make sure it's not going to move around while we are installing the valve. |
| 07:56 | So let's get that done now. |
| 07:59 | Now that we've got the head located in a way that we can easily work on it, we can go ahead and fit the valves. |
| 08:03 | Now for our first demonstration here that I'll talk through a little bit more slowly, we're going to start with number 5 intake valve just simply because that way our camera gets nice and easy access so you can really see what's going on. |
| 08:15 | Now the process is going to start with us taking our valves and these are as I've mentioned a Ferrea 1 mm oversize stainless valve, now as these are shipped, they are also covered in a oil or fluid to prevent any contamination or any corrosion occurring and we obviously want to start by just giving the entire valve a thorough clean down just to make sure that all of the shipping fluid has been properly removed, also focusing on the collet groove as well. |
| 08:46 | And once we've done that we're also going to take our clean engine oil and we're just going to apply a little bit of our clean engine oil onto the stem of the valve. |
| 08:57 | Now we can just use our glove here just to make sure that that's thoroughly coated around the stem and I also like to also apply a light coat of oil onto the actual seating surface. |
| 09:08 | So with that, we can take our valve and we're going to locate it into the correct guide and we're just going to gently push that through the valve guide seal. |
| 09:18 | The friction of that valve guide seal will keep the valve in place so it's not going to fall out. |
| 09:23 | Next we're going to take our spring seat and again same operation there, we have already cleaned these down but just one final cleaning here with a clean rag and our brake clean just to make sure there's no dirt or debris attached to those spring seats and these are just the factory 4G63 item. |
| 09:38 | And again we can just drop that down over the top of the valve and over the top of the valve guide seal. |
| 09:46 | And that's going to sit correctly in the right location. |
| 09:48 | Next step is to take our spring and one of our titanium retainers. |
| 09:53 | You do also need to be mindful depending on the spring material you're working with, can be damaged by our bare hands so that's one reason to wear gloves. |
| 10:03 | Some of the more high end materials can suffer from hydrogen embrittlement so we don't want to take any risks there. |
| 10:10 | This part here can be a little bit fiddly, what we're going to do is just locate the retainer over the top of the valve and depending on the angle we've got our head sitting at, we should be able to get that to just sit there nicely waiting for our valve spring compressor. |
| 10:25 | Haven't got enough angle on the cylinder head, you can end up finding that that's going to want to fall over so again, just a little bit of manipulation, you'll find the correct location for that to be nice and easy. |
| 10:36 | We can now take our valve spring compressor and we can compress that valve. |
| 10:41 | So we've got our valve spring compressor here, I've already gone ahead and set this to the correct depth. |
| 10:46 | We don't want to over compress the valve but on the other hand if we don't compress the valve spring sufficiently it's going to make it difficult for us to get access to the collet groove and fit those locks so let's just get this installed now and we'll just make sure that we locate this correctly on the underside of the valve, correctly onto the retainer and once we're happy with that location, we can just press down on that and compress our valve spring. |
| 11:20 | Now once that goes over centre, we can see that it will sit there nicely by itself so we don't actually have to support that and that's also going to just take a little bit of effort to work out exactly where that wants to sit so that we can work with it. |
| 11:34 | Now we can move on and we can take care of our collets here. |
| 11:38 | And again, the technique that you'll develop will really depend on what you've got available. |
| 11:43 | I find that using a small amount of our engine assembly lube on the inside of those collets or locks is a nice way to just keep them from moving around so I'm just going to go ahead and apply a little bit of our assembly lube to the inside of the collects now and then we can go ahead and get them installed. |
| 12:04 | Alright to two tools that I usually use for installing these locks is either a magnetised screwdriver, that can be really helpful, or alternatively I do also have a small pair of tweezers so it's just a case of manipulating these into place and while we're doing this we may also have to physically move our valve spring compressor so that we actually locate the retainer so that we can get the lock where it needs to go. |
| 12:29 | So let's go ahead and get these installed now. |
| 12:42 | Alright we've got our first lock in place there and you just saw me there just move the valve spring compressor around just so I could move the retainer relative to the valve and just get a little bit of room to work that collet around the back there, now going to go ahead and install our second one and this may require a little bit more effort in terms of moving the valve spring compressor just to make room for the collect to actually slip into place so let's give it a go now. |
| 13:13 | Alright so there I got the collet initially into the right location and then just by manipulating the valve spring compressor, a little bit of pressure from the end of my thumb, I was able to push that down into its correct location. |
| 13:26 | They're both in location now so we can now gently remove that valve spring compressor. |
| 13:30 | While we're doing this we want to make sure that neither of those collets actually move out of place. |
| 13:41 | With the valve spring compressor removed, I'm just going to now remove the excess assembly lube from the top of the retainer there so we can actually visually check the collets and make sure that they are properly installed. |
| 13:55 | Alright so we can see that the collets are sitting nicely, we've got both of them installed, they're sitting nicely in the retainer. |
| 14:01 | So that's the process we're just going to rinse and repeat here with our remaining 7 intake valves and we'll speed that process up a little bit now. |
| 15:48 | Alright, at this stage we've got all 8 of our intake valves successfully installed, we've checked all of the collets and everything is sitting correctly, we're now going to flip the head over and repeat the process with the exhaust valves. |
| 17:43 | Alright we've completed the installation of all of the valves and we're happy with how all of the valve locks are sitting. |
| 17:49 | We've got the head now sitting here on a couple of pieces of timber protected with our little rubber mat. |
| 17:57 | Alternatively here for this next part, you could also use a head stand, like we've got in the background of our set but I know most people probably won't be able to have access to that so the idea behind the 2 strips of timber, we've got these either side of the cylinder head so that the valves can protrude without actually contacting, this is just going to prevent any chance of the valves being bent as we complete the assembly of the head. |
| 18:21 | I will point out that we could actually leave this step as it is and fit the head as we've got it here and then complete the assembly of the head. |
| 18:30 | With the 4G63 it does give us the ability to install the head with the valve train installed as well, we can still get easy access to the cylinder head bolt so my preference is to complete the job, essentially as far as we can. |
| 18:44 | That's going to start here with the installation of our hydraulic lash adjuster or lifter. |
| 18:51 | So we've got these here, there's a lot of confusion about these particular parts and how to deal with them, particularly if you've jumped on any forums and looked at how people are dealing with them, there's a lot of mixed opinions, a lot of misinformation. |
| 19:04 | We don't need to worry about misinformation and we don't need to go searching on forums for the answers. |
| 19:10 | The factory workshop manual will tell you exactly what to do with these, regardless whether you are reusing them or you are fitting brand new ones. |
| 19:18 | The idea behind this is to thoroughly clean the lifter if you are reusing it, using clean diesel fuel. |
| 19:25 | Mitsubishi actually recommend using 3 containers progressively so that we start with one used for cleaning and then progressively move to the actual bleeding stage with fresh clean diesel fuel. |
| 19:36 | Now inside the lifter, accessible down through a little hole in the top, there is a small ball and spring and what we can do is use something like a straightened out paper clip to insert that just gently through the end of the lifter and what that will do is release the pressure inside the lifter or lash adjuster, allow us to depress that little plunger at the end. |
| 19:59 | The last step, and I'm not going to actually show this, I've already done this but the last step essentially is to insert the lifter completely submersed in diesel fuel. |
| 20:10 | Press down on that little ball and spring and completely depress the plunger and allow it to expand. |
| 20:16 | What that does is it fills the lash adjuster with diesel fuel. |
| 20:21 | Conversely a lot of people on the forums recommend pressing that little ball and spring inside and actually pushing all of the fluid, oil or diesel, whatever it may be, out of the lash adjuster, leaving it soft for installation. |
| 20:35 | That will work, it won't necessarily cause you any issues but certainly when you first start the engine, what you're going to end up with is a lot of noise from the valve train as those lash adjusters refill with oil and actually pressurise. |
| 20:50 | So recommendation from Mitsubishi, that's what we're following, we've got these already bled up and we're simply going to install them so let's go ahead and get these in now. |
| 21:05 | Alright all of the lash adjusters are now correctly fitted back into the head, we're now going to go ahead and fit our rocker gear. |
| 21:12 | Before we do that, we do need to understand that the rockers are going to be rotating on the tip of the lash adjuster as well as the tip of the valve so some protection is really warranted here. |
| 21:23 | So what I'm going to do is go through and apply some of our moly based assembly lube to both of those contact points through the rest of the valve train so let's get that done. |
| 21:36 | We can now go ahead and install those rockers. |
| 21:40 | Now prior to installing them, obviously we want to make sure that they are thoroughly cleaned and there's no dirt or debris contained on them. |
| 21:46 | The only real trick here is making sure that they are positively located on the tip of the valve, there is a little recess at the end of the rocker that will slip into the valve tip, it's relatively straightforward to make sure they are installed properly so let's get that done now. |
| 22:12 | Alright we've got all of our rockers now installed, the next step is to install our camshafts and our cam caps. |
| 22:19 | Before we go and drop the cams into place, we do want to apply a generous coating of our assembly lube to the camshaft journals as well as the rollers on our rockers. |
| 22:30 | Basically anything that the camshaft is going to rotate against, this will protect the camshaft until such time as we build up good engine oil pressure. |
| 22:38 | So let's get that done. |
| 22:48 | OK we've got all of our journals lubricated and once I'd applied that lubricant, you just saw me there go through and using a finger just smear that over the entire surface of the journal just to make sure that everything that is bare aluminium is going to be protected. |
| 23:02 | We can now get our cams ready to drop in, we've got our GSC Power Division S2 cams here, they're still wrapped so let's get those unwrapped. |
| 23:11 | Obviously when we're installing our camshafts we need to make sure that we're installing the correct cam in the correct location. |
| 23:17 | GSC make this nice and easy for us to know because the cams are actually labelled. |
| 23:21 | On this one here we can see that it is labelled as intake, obviously the other one, exhaust. |
| 23:27 | Irrespective of that though, with the MIVEC cylinder head, this is also really straightforward because we can see that at the end of the intake cam here, we've got a couple of extra oil galleries for the MIVEC oil supply so we know this is our intake cam. |
| 23:40 | What I'm going to do is just give this a quick clean down with some brake clean and a rag and we can get it into location. |
| 23:49 | Now when we do install the cam, we want to take note of the dowel in the camshaft. |
| 23:54 | That should be pointing approximately at the 12° point so we'll just get that located approximately correctly and we can now repeat the process with the exhaust cam. |
| 24:06 | Alright we've got both cams now installed in location and of course they aren't sitting perfectly right now, they will rock a little bit because when they are pulled down with the cam caps, they will end up depressing some of the valves. |
| 24:19 | So before we install the cam caps, we've got to go through and apply a little bit more of our assembly lubricant, this time to the top surfaces of the cam journals which are going to run against our cam caps so let's get that done now. |
| 24:36 | OK we're ready to fit our cam caps and this is another area that I know a lot of people get concerned about, where should the cam caps go, how do we know which cam cap goes where? And it's actually relatively straightforward, each of the cam caps will have a letter and a number stamped on the top of it and in this case we've got a cam cap that says E2 so we know that that's the exhaust side in the number 2 location. |
| 25:00 | If we turn it over, we can also see that there is actually an offset between the dowels and bolt holes and where the cam cap actually is recessed for the journal so what this means is we can't actually bolt the cam cap in around the wrong way. |
| 25:15 | So what we're going to do is just go ahead and get these all located where they need to go. |
| 25:24 | That's covered our exhaust cam caps, obviously the intake cam, exactly the same. |
| 25:29 | This time there is an I2 on that cam cap so again that lets us know where abouts that's located, again the offset means that we can't bolt that in around the wrong way. |
| 25:44 | Alright we've got our central cam caps for the intake and the exhaust located there, obviously no bolts in at this stage. |
| 25:51 | Now I'm going to hold off with the outer cam caps for the moment because all 4 of those cam caps do require a little bit of sealant so what I like to do is get these central cam caps snugged down to start with and then we can deal with the cam caps that require that sealant separately so I'll go through now and we'll get our bolts installed. |
| 26:21 | OK with all of our bolts started we can now go ahead and pull those cam caps down. |
| 26:25 | Now this does need to be done in stages, Mitsubishi's workshop manual recommends doing this in 2 to 3 stages and what we want to do is pull them down gradually and evenly. |
| 26:35 | If we just pull one cap the whole way down until it's snugged down onto the cylinder head, we do risk damaging or even snapping the camshaft so it's a case of basically working our way down and making sure that we're pulling all of the caps down evenly to prevent that sort of an issue. |
| 26:51 | The recommended torque for these fasteners is 19 newton metres or 15 foot pound, again coming from the workshop manual. |
| 26:57 | Most people will probably not have a torque wrench that measures down this low so it doesn't need to be particularly tight and we can just do this by hand which is exactly what I'm doing to do now. |
| 27:08 | So let's get these cam caps all pulled down. |
| 27:57 | Now that we've got all of our cam caps pulled down and tightened up, we're going to install our front and rear cam caps for each of the cams. |
| 28:05 | Now this does require a camshaft seal installed on the front cam caps and each of those cam caps does also require a small amount of sealant. |
| 28:15 | Again the sealant and location of that sealant is defined in the workshop manual so all we need to do is pay attention to that definition. |
| 28:23 | We're going to be using a 3 bond 1215 product for this and I'm just going to go ahead and apply a small amount of that sealant as required. |
| 28:36 | It is important when you are applying that sealant you don't need to use an excessive amount and it is important to only place it where the workshop manual suggests. |
| 28:46 | The reason for this is if we apply too much sealant it can actually make its way into the cam journal and that could affect the lubrication of the journal and result in a premature failure. |
| 28:57 | Now that we've got our sealant applied we're going to start with our 2 rear caps so let's get those into location now. |
| 29:15 | Now that we've got the rear cam caps in location and tightened down, we're going to repeat that process of course on the front. |
| 29:21 | Slightly different here though because we are going to take the opportunity to install the two camshaft seals while we're doing this. |
| 29:27 | So we want to do this ideally before we've actually tightened the cam caps properly down, that'll give us the ability to relatively easily slide those cam seals into location and align them properly. |
| 29:39 | Alternatively it's totally possible to fit the cam seals with those cam caps properly torqued down, however it does take a little bit more effort and to do it properly really does require a special service tool. |
| 29:50 | Using this technique which I'm about to show you means that we can install them with relatively little effort so let's go ahead and get that done. |
| 30:12 | OK so we've got those 2 cam caps into location. |
| 30:15 | I've tightened those bolts down lightly but they're definitely not snugged up completely and that's going to allow us to easily push these two cam seals in by hand. |
| 30:23 | So we've got genuine Mitsubishi cam seals here. |
| 30:26 | Before we install these, what I'm going to do is just take our little oiling can and we'll just apply a light coat of oil to the inside of both of those seals, that's really important because these will be dry as they come out of the pack from Mitsubishi and if we don't lubricate those, it can result in premature failure of the seal. |
| 30:46 | Important when we're doing this that we don't apply any lubricant to the outside of the seal. |
| 30:50 | Now what we're going to do is just simply push these into location. |
| 30:54 | Given that our cam caps aren't completely tight, this should be relatively easy, just requires mild pressure so let's go ahead and get that done. |
| 31:08 | OK we've got both of those seals installed there and just a couple of points I'll make here, with the Evo 9 head in particular, with the MIVEC pulley on the intake cam, the inside diameter of the seal will not contact the camshaft, unlike the exhaust side so that's perfectly normal. |
| 31:23 | That'll seal to the outside diameter of that MIVEC pulley when we bolt that down. |
| 31:28 | The other aspect here is that we are aiming for those seals to just be very slightly lower than flush with this outside surface. |
| 31:36 | It'd be quite obvious if you've got them nice and square and in location. |
| 31:40 | We're ready now to tighten down those two remaining caps. |
| 31:50 | Now while our sealant is still wet, it's always a good idea to take the opportunity to just remove any excess that has been squished out so we'll go through and do that now. |
| 32:05 | This leaves us with one remaining part that we're going to fit during this step which is our little oil distribution plate which sits at the back of the head. |
| 32:12 | Again I've gone through and cleaned that, simply a case of fitting that and bolting it down. |
| 32:24 | OK so this completes the assembly of our cylinder head, we're ready to move on with the next step of our process. |
