Those darn V8's keep showing up everywhere

The week started out great. I got back from a weekend trip to a pile of goodies in my mailbox. In probably what has been the fastest I have seen, I got all of my parts in a record 5 days from the states. A quick inventory : New MLS headgaskets, head bolts, exhaust manifold gaskets, valve seals, and a new valve spring compressor tool from comp cams. That tool is much better, I can cut the time it takes to swap out valve springs in half and with more confidence.

Looking at the CNC work on the heads, one thing to note is the intake tract still has the minute tooling lines from the CNC machine, its not a polished face.

There are 2 schools of thought on the intake tract, one group says the lines should stay since they help with atomization of the fuel, the other says they should be completely smooth to allow better airflow.

My thought process is that the tooling marks will help create a boundary layer and is more beneficial.

The heads came with springs installed but were not enough for the lift my Cam is going to bring so I had to change out the beehives for double springs and Ti retainers.

the springs are all changed out and I spent the rest of the time cleaning the old head gasket material off the block in prep for the installation.

This build was cool... Until I saw it going around the ring then it became amazing!

If I can finish the work up and get the tune nailed down, I'm hoping to make one more trip to the ring in early October. If I don't make it by then then I will have to wait until next year.

A quote from an old man I was talking to in Adenau (the town that the ring runs through).

"Nobody but idiots and the english drive the ring in November... Hrmph..."

With prep work finished, it was time to throw on the heads.

Its extremely important to clean the head bolt holes out before you install them, if there is any liquid or built up dirt/threadlock inside you run the risk of cracking the block when you torque the head down. I used a wet dry vac some duct tape and the green air line tube to blow out then vacuum the holes clean. After that I took an old head bolt, cut a slot in the threaded portion and used it as a thread chaser. It scraped the threads clean and collected the crud in the slot.

After that it was time to dress the motor.

Its all built up minus running the wire harness, After that she will be ready for install. Since I made better time on the rebuild than I thought I'm finally going to tackle my long standing side project before I put the motor back in. Its time for Air conditioning!

Its been a bit but last season I got the air conditioning finished and unfortunately about a week later took a piece of wood through the condensor and radiator core. I'm taking that as a sign...

Therefore the car is going to be more track oriented now. As such, the car is getting a few upgrades. The first time attack event is on 1 May at the Nurburgring GP track so I've got about a month to get this work done. I'm looking at a upgrade to the exhaust system a bit, the aero started from last year is nearing completion and then I'll be building a front bashbar/radiator support to integrate the front splitter so transmit its down force to the frame.

I dropped the motor back out today and prepped for the header swap. 1 3/4 inch long tubes with a 3 inch collector. Ii'll run it through a high flow cat then step it down to 2 1/2 inches to the y pipe. I'm torn between running a 3 inch all the way back or jumping up to a 3 1/2 inch single.