Wondering if anyone knows what exactly are the heads which came off of my old engine. The engine had been rebuild with new brazillian AS41 crankcase by Vega, so I'm guessing these were added then and probably aren't stock. Van is a 1979 Bay. They're dual port, 85.5mm bore, 35.5mm intake, 30mm exhaust with very low cc (I'm yet to measure so sadly don't have a figure) The pistons they ran on were domed. I'm struggling to find any mention of them in the wide web and I'm working out if they're useful for anything as they are dirty, but have no cracks. See pics...
Ahh sadly they're at my mums house, so can't get any other pics, but this one shows a bit more Looks like 040101375 76
After digging around in the crevices of Google, I managed to find a thread on The Samba which sheds a bit more light on these heads.... Seems like they were a head introduced in the 80's and made to only work a specific set of matched dished pistons which had more cooling fins on the barrels to compensate for less cooling fins on the heads, due to them being thinner overall ...! Seems like sadly they won't be of much use as the chamber volume is so low. Unless you can still get these matched pistons and barrels but I can't seem to find any available. Or whether it would be possible to shim the crap outta them to get enough deck height...? If anyone has any ideas of what I could do with them, then I'm all ears!
Judson or home build jobbie? The Judson ones look very at home in a bug, not seen one in a bus though.
There are pre built kits available now utilising that supercharger for type 1 engines Kompressor haus do the kits in the uk And joe blow in the United States
Was thinking about this, but wasn't too sure how viable it would be as it has less cooling find than standard heads, and the matched cylinders for the have more in order to compensate. I guess it would have to endure higher head temps if paired with standard cylinders and barrels. Don't how well that would go I.e wether it would just accelerate cracks developing in the heads... could be a fun experiment for someone tho I guess aha!
I don't think that's correct, the combustion chambers look pretty standard. What is different is the distance the barrels slip into the heads which is not far at all on yours so yes with stock barrels which have approx 12mm (guessing) at the top with no fins, used with your heads there would be a gap with no cooling fins. Indeed, a bad idea because air takes the easiest path which would be the gap with no fins resulting in less air flowing through the fins you would have on the heads and barrels, so it's worse that simply having less cooling fins. I wouldn't even consider it.
Aye aye, I see what you mean there @Zed . So unless there are any of the matched cylinders and pistons still floating around, sadly it seems like the bookend idea for them is the best option haha!
Yes, a weird one that if you build on you'll be kinda stuck with forever. Some of your assumptions about deck height etc are wrong though. the actual working part (if you like) is identical or near enough - the cylinder length the same, same stroke, combustion chambers same. It's outside that's different, "merely" fins moved from the head to the barrels. Why? Dunno. Maybe they thought the top of the steel cylinders would benefit from more cooling and the heads survive with less. Maybe steel is cheaper than aluminium, maybe the South American engineers wanted change for changes sake - just look at some of the gawd awful changes they made to the T2 bodywork! Why? Because they could.
I see what you mean! Appreciate the clarification. Seems like the combination of the BIG dish in the piston top, and the fins on the outside being placed differently make these impossible to use with anything else. There was also talk in the Samba links I shared that they made an ethanol compatible setup too, which just used different pistons (had a big dome on them for high compression!). Seems like it was a product developed to meet the different needs in the south American market (no idea what these were tho) and I guess some were used by engine builders all over the place! But like you say, may just have been change for changes sake. A mystery for the moment...
