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#49's new powerplant has arrived, let the build begin

Simonty said:
By the way I like that you're getting a valve job with the head-work. I don't know a lot about head-work but I have read that the valve area is super-critical and gains are there (from a 3-angle valve job) that will affect all RPMs nicely. Never heard of a Contour/Mondeo with this work being done before.
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Head work has been done before. Kinger a member on the boards used to do sell this service for 2.5L & 3L heads under pnpheads.com. Here's a link: http://web.archive.org/web/20050208081840/http://www.pnpheads.com/
 
That's really cool to see, thanks for the link. I did a mild DIY job on mine and it would've been nice to see something like that at the time.
 
Rara said:
Mike, see if you can get Manley to tell you specifically what steels they are using for thier one-piece valves.
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From the Manley catalog...

SEVERE DUTY® SERIES
-Superior Stainless for High Temperature Gasoline Engines
-Exhaust Material XH-428 with Double the Ultimate Tensile Strength ( at 1500° F ) over the competition
-Intake Material NK-844 with 1000 Times Better Fatigue Strength than competitors’ offerings.

Also found this old CircleTrack article...

The Valve Design
The NexTek valve uses XH-428 stainless steel and a completely new manufacturing technique to create a valve with a hollow stem and head. The hollow sections of the valve are filled with sodium. The sodium provides an internal cooling mechanism for the valve, drawing heat away from the valve head. This design creates a valve that offers the strength of a stainless-steel valve, is almost as light as a titanium valve (within 10 percent), and offers increased durability and reliability.

The chrome stem and integral hard tip, hardened to Rockwell Rc 55, ensure the valve will withstand the rigors of racing, and the swirl-polished stem promotes flow through the port.



Through proprietary manufacturing...

read full caption


ctrp_9902_03_z+manley_nextek_stainless_steel_exhaust_valve+close_up.jpg

Through proprietary manufacturing processes, the NexTek valve is made with a hollow stem and head from XH-428 stainless steel. The hollow sections are filled with sodium. The sodium helps draw the heat from the head of the valve into the stem, using the valve guide as well as the valve seat to transfer heat from the valve.

​

Properties to Survive
The NexTek valve runs cooler than a titanium exhaust valve at the critical valve head area, which is very important with the increasing trend in compression-limited race engines. Through testing, it has been determined that a peak performing 9:1 compression race engine hashigher exhaust-gas temperatures (EGT) than a 14:1 compression race engine. With this knowledge, race-engine builders know the exhaust valve needs to be able to withstand even more temperature abuse with low-compression race engines. Instead of abandoning the low-weight titanium exhaust valves and sacrificing rpm in favor of durability, engine builders can choose the NexTek valves and have the best of both worlds. Manley offers these valves for everything from a small-block Chevy or Ford head to the wildest Winston Cup heads (SB2 and Yates) you can imagine. If you have heat-killing exhaust temperatures in your engine, check out the NexTek valve-it could be the solution to high EGT valve failures.
 
Thanks Mike. Unfortunately, the steel names they use are pretty much just made up by thier marketing dept.; they pick an existing stainless steel and make up a new name for it, kind of pisses me off sometimes, lol.

Did you get the severe duty or the "Nextek" for your exhaust valves? The "NexTek" version would go a LONG way to letting you run much higher EGTs. Testing we have done for hollow, sodium filled valves says temperature can be as much as 200 degrees cooler in the critical gas impingement area compared to a solid stem valve. Fwiw, thier literature says it is the head area where temp is key, but its not, its in the gas impingment area which where the base of the stem starts to flare into the head.

Based on what I can figure out from thier literature, the severe duty valves should be just fine, but not a huge improvement over the OEM valves.
 
Rara said:
Thanks Mike. Unfortunately, the steel names they use are pretty much just made up by thier marketing dept.; they pick an existing stainless steel and make up a new name for it, kind of pisses me off sometimes, lol.
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Figured that was the case. Kinda drives me nuts too because you can't find any information about it on MatWeb. Oh well, I guess I'll have to call and talk with a some one in their tech dept and maybe get a hold of an engineer.

Rara said:
Did you get the severe duty or the "Nextek" for your exhaust valves? The "NexTek" version would go a LONG way to letting you run much higher EGTs. Testing we have done for hollow, sodium filled valves says temperature can be as much as 200 degrees cooler in the critical gas impingement area compared to a solid stem valve. Fwiw, thier literature says it is the head area where temp is key, but its not, its in the gas impingment area which where the base of the stem starts to flare into the head.

Based on what I can figure out from thier literature, the severe duty valves should be just fine, but not a huge improvement over the OEM valves.
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I was planning on getting the Severe Duty valves, http://www.manleyperformance.com/dl/2010/valves.pdf
 
thesidekick34 said:
What's the news? Its been almost 2 weeks?
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Cleaned out the garage to do an oil change on my wife's Mazda3, prepped my fireplace in the basement for mortar and stone work, fixed my grandpa's friend's lawnmower ;)


As far as the car goes...


I'm still waiting for a quote to come back from BPE Racing on the custom valves and additional head work. They mainly deal with wholesale so they need 50% of the payment up front and the rest will be COD when the heads are sent back. They initially quoted me for just a port and polish, but I want them to perform a flow test before and after, flow match each port, and then do any prep work needed before reassembly (resurfacing, honing valve guides, etc) so this will mostly likely be more costly then the initial quote I was given. The guy that I'm working with at BPE was out of the office last week so that has caused some delays.

Now as far as the work that I am doing on the car now it's pretty slim. The weather is to cold in the garage to do any paint work. I also can't finish making the mold of the trunk for my carbon fiber version because of the cold. This only leaves me with engine work. The only work left on my engine is really the reassembly. All of the measuring and machine work has been completed. However I don't want to assemble it until I have my heads back from BPE Racing.

Now all that said once I finish the stone work on my fireplace in the basement I'm going to clean up down there and make a work area to do some small part construction. I need to make a pod for my HKS boost controller screen to go on my dash and I also need to make a new bezel to house my 7" touchscreen which will be the interface for my carputer. Hopefully I can make these small parts in the basement and not stink up my entire house with the resin smell. However some how I don't think that is going to happen. We'll see if I can make something work with a drag out fan our something wedged in the door way leading out to my patio.
 
Resin smell in house = unhappy parents (for me anyways). That smell hung around for at least 3 days. Didn't help that I did it in my basement and the return sucked up some vapors and spread it through the house.. oops!
 
Great thread, I just read it over the past 3 days. I can't wait to see how things go. When are you getting it painted?
 
greasemonkey1489 said:
Resin smell in house = unhappy parents (for me anyways). That smell hung around for at least 3 days. Didn't help that I did it in my basement and the return sucked up some vapors and spread it through the house.. oops!
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Ha.. yea I have my own place, but an unhappy wife is worse then unhappy parents... so I'm not sure I'll play that game. I may try to setup something in the garage. I may have to invest in a nice garage heater and ditch the good old torpedo propane one.

slhawkins said:
Great thread, I just read it over the past 3 days. I can't wait to see how things go. When are you getting it painted?
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Thanks. Probably won't happen till spring now. My friend and I are going to experiment with my old fenders to try some things out over the winter at his place. He can paint in the winter if he wants as he has a dedicated insulated garage with a massive heater. He does a lot of paint work and builds some pretty sweet motorcycles in his spare time.
 
never ending project! blegh. i've enjoyed driving my car the last year and a half, even if it isnt as fast as i'd like it to be. keep up the good work mike let me know if i can help in any way.

oh and thanks for the pointers on that power steering rack i did. 2 hours out and in! :)
 
TRicker said:
never ending project! blegh. i've enjoyed driving my car the last year and a half, even if it isnt as fast as i'd like it to be. keep up the good work mike let me know if i can help in any way.

oh and thanks for the pointers on that power steering rack i did. 2 hours out and in! :)
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The never ending project will end next year. As soon as the paint work is finished the engine is going in. Then off to DB for break in on the dyno. My only hope is that it will be finished in time for SZ11.

Glad to hear everything went smooth on the steering rack!
 
I like that color, with carbon hood and trunk right? Decision on the wheels yet?
 
Very nice color selection, I looked at that color several times when choosing colors for my car. I've decided to with fords medium charcoal and toyotas bright blue that they have on tacomas and corollas. Blue on top, charcoal on the bottom
 
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