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Practical Engine Building: Step 8: Cylinder Head Assembly

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Step 8: Cylinder Head Assembly

08.36

00:00 - Now we've come to the point where we are going to assemble our cylinder head ready to fit to our short block.
00:06 Now the cylinder head for the 2JZ engine build, actually started out as a brand new casting.
00:12 It's been CNC ported and it's also been fitted with a set of bronze valve guides.
00:17 We've just completed a thorough deburring of the cylinder head, making sure that any of the loose casting flash has been removed, and following that it's been thoroughly cleaned as well, so now it's ready for assembly.
00:29 So to start with what we're going to do is install a new set of valve guide seals.
00:33 Now these are a Supertech valve guide seal that comes as part of the valve train components that have been fitted to the head.
00:41 We need to be careful here because these are distinguished between inlet and exhaust.
00:46 Now what I'm going to be using for the installation here is a valve guide installation tool.
00:52 This makes it very nice and easy to install the valve guide seals because it actually locates inside the valve guide.
00:59 So this makes sure that we are going to be installing the valve guides squarely.
01:04 What I'm going to do is take one of our valve guide seals here, just going to apply a light coat of lubricating oil to the inside of the seal and this is just going to prevent any chance of the seal ripping or tearing as it's being installed.
01:21 Following this we'll slide the seal onto our valve guide seal installation tool, locate that down into the valve guide, and then we can just take a hammer and gently tap the guide seal into place.
01:40 So we'll go through now and we'll complete the installation of the remaining valve guide seals.
01:50 With all our valve guide seals now correctly installed, we're going to flip the head over and we're going to install all of our valves.
01:58 The valves we're fitting to the cylinder head are an aftermarket Supertech valve.
02:03 Everything's already been machined and prior to disassembling the head, I made sure that all of the valves were marked with their location in the cylinder head.
02:11 It's really critical that we make sure that the valves stay in the correct spot in the cylinder head.
02:17 Now to do that it's as simple as taking a sharpie marker and marking the location on the underside of the valve.
02:23 So now we're gonna go ahead and install the valves.
02:26 What we want to do is obviously make sure that our valves are clean and I'm going to apply a thin coat of lubricating oil to the stem of the valve as well as the seating face of the valve.
02:39 I'm also just going to apply a little bit of lubricating oil to the valve seat in the cylinder head.
02:46 Once we've done this we can take the valve, locate it in the valve guide, and just gently push it down through the valve guide seal.
02:55 That valve's now in place, I'm going to go ahead and repeat that process and install the remaining valves.
03:07 With all of our valves now installed in the cylinder head, we can flip the head over again, and we can begin installing our valve springs.
03:15 I'm going to demonstrate here installing one of the valve springs, then we're gonna jump ahead and look at our completed cylinder head with all of the valve springs installed.
03:24 If you need a refresher on how to go about this process, you can refer back to the practical engine building skills section of the course.
03:32 So we're already installed our valve spring seats into the cylinder head.
03:37 I'm going to take our valve spring and retainer here and I'm just going to drop those down over the valve and make sure that they locate correctly in the valve seat.
03:48 Now we're going to be using our SP Tools valve spring compressor.
03:52 Just going to locate the underside of that on the head of the valve.
03:56 And we'll locate the other end on the retainer.
03:59 Once we're comfortable with how that is located, we can compress the valve spring down.
04:06 Now with the valve spring compressed, we can just rest the valve spring compressor on the head and we can install our collets.
04:15 I'm just going to be using a small amount of engine assembly lube here just to retain the collet in the collet groove on the valve.
04:24 I'm also going to be using a little bit of that assembly lube on the screwdriver here just to hold the collet.
04:31 Once we've got that in place, just going to drop the collet down into the collet groove on the valve.
04:40 Once we've got that down located in the collet groove, just going to rotate it around so that it's going to make it easier for me to install our second collet.
04:52 We'll just get that around, out of the way.
04:55 And we'll grab our second collet now and just repeat the process.
05:00 Just again going to apply just a very small amount of engine assembly lubricant and we'll use that on our screwdriver, and we'll just drop that down into place.
05:11 OK with both of our collets now installed, we can release the tension on our valve spring compressor and remove the valve spring compressor.
05:24 We'll take one last look and make sure that the collets are still correctly fitted there, and we're now completed the installation of our first valve spring.
05:34 We're going to go through now and complete that process.
05:38 Now with all of our valve springs and retainers installed, we've got the head back on our head stand, the last part of this head assembly is to install the shims and then the buckets.
05:50 After this we're ready to begin assembling the head onto our short block.
05:55 Now the way the 2JZ cylinder head works is with a bucket valve actuation, so we have the bucket here that the camshaft actually operates on and this then in turn operates through a shim onto the stem or the tip of the valve.
06:12 The shim that we have here is what's used to set the valve lash or valve clearance.
06:18 So this is a mechanical style valve actuation system.
06:22 And it's very important that the shim provides us with the correct valve lash.
06:27 This has already been previously set by the machine shop that did the cylinder head work.
06:33 Although a point I'll make here is that often we find that when the valve lash is set, with the cylinder head on a bench like we've got here, we find that it can fluctuate or vary slightly when the head is actually distorted as it's bolted down onto the block.
06:49 So we're going to need to recheck our valve lash and potentially make some small adjustments once we've got the head fitted to the block.
06:57 What we're going to do is start by fitting the shim into the recess in the top of the retainer, and that'll sit down onto the stem or the tip of the valve.
07:08 Now an important point to note here, we want to make sure that the shim is sitting slightly proud of the retainer.
07:15 Now this is going to make sure that the bucket will actually be operating on the shim and not on the retainer.
07:22 If it operates on the retainer, this is an easy way to result in one of the valves dropping out of the head, and obviously a catastrophic failure can result from that.
07:32 Once we've done this we're going to take our bucket, and you'll notice that I've labelled the bucket.
07:37 So I've labelled this i for intake and one.
07:40 Now each of these bucket and shims need to stay together once the valve lash has been set.
07:46 What I'm going to do is just apply a small amount of lubricating oil just onto the outside of this bucket and this is just going to provide some lubrication when we drop that down into the bucket bore in the cylinder head.
08:02 Once we've done that we can install the bucket into the bore, that'll drop down over the shim, and that's complete.
08:08 I'm now going to go through and complete the process with the remaining valves.
08:19 So that completes our cylinder head assembly.
08:22 Due to the design of the 2JZ cylinder head, we can't install the camshafts into the head until the head is bolted down on the block.
08:30 We can now move on with the next step of our process.

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