Practical Engine Building: Step 8: Cylinder Head Assembly
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Step 8: Cylinder Head Assembly
07.55
| 00:00 | The next step of our process is to build up our cylinder head and here with the K20, there's actually not a large amount of work to do. |
| 00:06 | As you'll recall when we disassembled this for cleaning, we've left the valve guide seals installed, these were a brand new set of valve guide seals and there's really no point in removing them to replace them with another brand new set. |
| 00:19 | So, we've left those in place so we don't have to fit those of course. |
| 00:23 | The only task we're really going to be doing here is refitting our valves, our springs and our retainers. |
| 00:29 | We can't actually build up the rest of the cylinder head in terms of the cams and the cam tray because we have to bolt the cylinder head onto the block before we do that, otherwise we wouldn't be able to get to the head stud bolts, or the head studs I should say. |
| 00:45 | So, in this instance essentially we are just installing our valves. |
| 00:48 | I will point out here though that one of the tasks that has been completed by the company that ported and set up the cylinder head for us is to set our valve spring installed heights. |
| 00:59 | And that results or relies on the shims being placed underneath the valve seats here in order to get the correct installed height and seat pressure for our valve springs. |
| 01:10 | This is a really important step because it's not just a case of purchasing an aftermarket set of valve springs, installing them and thinking that that's going to be sufficient. |
| 01:19 | We want to get the installed height correct so that we have the correct seat pressure, so that the spring is actually going to be providing the force required for the particular cam profile we're running. |
| 01:29 | Again, that's been done for us and it does go a little outside the scope of our course anyway so I'll leave it at that. |
| 01:36 | What I'm going to do here is start by just getting the head flipped over a little bit, so that we can actually get access to install the valves. |
| 01:44 | And we're going to do that first of all on the exhaust side, so I'll just make sure that we've got the head in an appropriate location. |
| 01:52 | Now, what I'm going to be doing here is just starting by taking each of the valves, these have already been cleaned , but they are coated in a small amount of oil and this can attract dirt and dust over time so we're just going to clean those down with a small spray of brake clean. |
| 02:10 | And then going to apply a small amount of our mineral based engine oil to the valve stem itself. |
| 02:19 | And we'll just smear that with our glove as well as just a little coat of oil on our valve seating surface. |
| 02:26 | And then what we can do is go ahead and just install that into the valve guide. |
| 02:35 | And we'll gently push that through and that'll come through the valve guide seal. |
| 02:38 | Now, the frictional tension that the valve guide seal places on the valve there is going to hold it in place, so what I'll do is go through here and we'll install the remaining exhaust valves in place so that we can then go ahead and install our valve springs and everything locked in place. |
| 03:10 | Ok, now that we've got all of our valves installed we can start installing our valve springs and retainers and in order to do that, just as you've seen in the body of the course, we're going to be using a screwdriver that I've magnetised and this just helps position the locks or collets properly because they obviously will stick to the screwdriver. |
| 03:29 | Also going to be using a little bit of our engine assembly lube here and again this just helps everything stay in place as we're using our valve spring compressor. |
| 03:38 | It is of course a bit of a fiddly job, I generally find it takes two or three valves to sort of build up a bit of a technique and a bit of a rhythm for a particular cylinder head and then once you've sort of got that dialled in, the rest of the valves become quite straightforward. |
| 03:54 | The angle that I've got the cylinder head on here with the valves on a further angle should be sufficient for our valve spring retainer to stay in place so we'll just get that aligned over our valve and now we can apply our valve spring compressor. |
| 04:16 | Now, that we've got our valve spring compressed, we want to make sure that it's compressed far enough that we've got good access to the lock groove and it's going to make it much easier for us to get our locks installed. |
| 04:27 | Now, we can actually install those locks, so we'll take a little bit of our engine assembly lube here and apply it to the end of our screwdriver. |
| 04:34 | And what I want to do with that assembly lube, we'll just take one of these locks and I'm going to apply a little bit of that engine assembly lube to the inside. |
| 04:43 | So, that's going to be the surface that will actually contact the valve and that'll help it sort of stay in place. |
| 04:50 | These are tapered, they only go in one way , but that should be pretty easy to find. |
| 04:54 | And we'll just lower this into location, just using my other finger to help get it into the right spot. |
| 05:00 | So, that's located now in the groove on our valve and what I'm going to do is just use a little pick here or scriber and we'll just get that rotated around. |
| 05:12 | So, that's just going to make it nice and easy for me to have enough room to get access to our first or our other lock. |
| 05:19 | We're now going to repeat the process with our second lock. |
| 05:22 | And that should hopefully go in place relatively easily. |
| 05:27 | These again are a bit of a fiddly job so it will take a little bit to sort of get a technique that's going to work. |
| 05:34 | Alright, get our second one into place there. |
| 05:37 | And just before we remove our valve spring compressor, I just want to make sure that these are both in fact located correctly, which they are. |
| 05:47 | And now what we can do is gently remove our valve spring compressor. |
| 05:51 | While we do this we want to also make sure that we are keeping our retainer centred on the valve, that'll make sure that as we release it, it's not going to actually ping those collets or locks out of the way. |
| 06:07 | We can also take a last inspection, just a clean rag here and we can wipe down the lube that we've applied here, make sure that we are confident that both of our locks are correctly installed and that is the first of our valve springs and retainers installed. |
| 06:26 | We're going to go ahead now and speed this process up and we'll repeat the process for the remaining 15 valves. |
| 07:40 | Alright, so at this point we've got our cylinder head reassembled, we've got all of our valve springs and retainers in place and we're happy with how everything's sitting. |
| 07:50 | We're going to move on to the next step of our process. |
