I am trying to figure out how it happened. It was supposed to be so easy, pull the 1750 out, put the 1300 in, scratch my head over some fit problems and voila! I’m back on the road. Okay, so I discovered the 1300 was stuck and suddenly I’m rebuilding it. Parts are bought and so on and then next thing I know I find myself at John Norman racing lugging in my cylinder head. Warped, cracked and 10 thousandths from being too short means I had to buy a different, rebuildable head.
New valves, guides with stem seals, lots of machine work and all set up and ready to go. I hope I can put the bottom end together to be worthy of this head.
These are 2 liter cams, not quite 10548’s or the current hot-stuff Pittatores but supposedly a lot better than the originals or even the 00121 Veloce cams. All I have to do is bolt the head on, wrap the timing chain around the sprockets and Vroom. Well, sort of…
The new guides can be seen here and the nice new polish of the intake ports.
An early 1600 manifold is all I have right now. I know the ports wont quite match but it should be pretty good, better than the single Solex I was contemplating. Hopefully the future holds a 101 Veloce manifold for me. Anyone want to part with one?
I know, the burning question is “how much?”. It breaks down like this: $400 for a good core head, $760 in machine work and assembly and about $200 for new guides, stem seals and valves. Sounds like a lot (felt like a lot when I spent it) but knowing the head is ready to bolt on and knowing the reputation of the builders I am glad I went this route. Sure I could have cleaned up my old head, lapped the valves and installed the cams but who knows how long it would have worked before giving up somewhere inconvenient. Look for the installation of this head in the coming days.
If you have a pair of 40DCOE2’s with a matching manifold for this project I want to hear from YOU!