Before (1/5/06)
Magnum head, starting to take it apart. Not very pretty huh. It looks like the car it was on wasn't running the best, because the exhaust valves should be whitish-gray, instead of black.
Valves, springs, retainers and keepers. That is the Magnum cam that was in the head, there in the backround.
Ah, and the non-working actuator motor from my magnum intake manifold. This is what the inside looks like.
Head and rocker arms
Old valve seals off, new ones on.
Cleaned up, and put back together, minus something kinda obvious....
The reason there is one valve missing is because that valve was bent. Ack! When I took it apart, I went right from having the springs holding everything tight, to having the valves all the way out, so I didn't see that it wasn't sealing. When I dropped that valve in when re-installing them, it didn't seat....much to my alarm. Here is how bad it was...
I obviously wasn't expecting this, so I ordered a new triple bead lock valve from MoparSuperCenter. But, because it didn't arrive in enough time, I robbed a single bead lock valve from my standard head. Important to note - obviously you have to use single bead lock keepers with a single bead lock valve....but you also have to use the standard retainer. We tryed to use the magnum spring AND retainer, but there is enough of difference in the retainers, that it was pretty obvious that the keepers were sitting differently with the Magnum retainer on. So, right now, I have a single bead lock valve, retainer and keepers in one slot, but still with the Magnum valve spring. And if you're wondering, a standard valve and Magnum valve are the same except for the bead locks. Magnum is triple, standard is single.
Here is the start of disassembly
It took alot of grunting and "holding your mouth right" to get from the previous picture to this.....The engine mount plate is a pain, to put it nicely.
Here was my next surprise. I ordered a 2004 timing belt tensioner to replace my original, assuming that the original looked like all the other 2000 model year tensioners I'd seen INCLUDING the one in my 2000 FSM. Ha! This is what was on my car...
Anyway, good news is, the mounting holes are still in the same place, but you do have to do this (the round hole in the center) to the rear timing cover to get the tensioner to seat properly.
Disassembled further
My beautiful block and pistons. Wait...you mean they're not beautiful.....??
Head comparo on the exhaust side
CompCams 200 in place
Magnum head on!
New water pump, tensioner and timing belt
Pretty valve cover (that I painted myself) You might note that I DID NOT install my AEM adjustable cam gear. Here's why. We didn't have the time to degree the cam, nor the instruments to do it right. So, the cam gear was going to be set to 0. And to change the advance or retard, you have to take everything off again anyway. Ok, you think, but why not go ahead and put it on now. Well, here's why. Neither my dad or myself was impressed with the way the inner part of the cam gear can move side to side in the outer part. Meaning, unless you hold it just right when you tighten the bolts, the outer cog won't be centered on the inner piece. Meaning, relative to the cam, the gear would be running slightly out of round. Yes, yes I know it's not very much...but it was enough to make me just put the standard cam gear back on.
Engine mount plate back on, and engine mounted up
Header going on. Notice the scratches in the paint? Yeah, it doesn't exactly go in easy. Without two people working together, I don't think it would have even been possible to get it in. We put it in from below obviously.....because we weren't smart enough to think of sticking it in there when the head was off.
More header pics. It fit great once in place. (I did raise the heat shield up just a bit right there....you can see it hanging down where the flange is, and it needed some more clearance).
Magnum intake manifold going on, and fuel rail business....
We modified the drivers side intake manifold mount bracket to work on the mag intake. Just took some cutting and bending. (sorry the pic isn't clear...I had to hold the camera and guess)
Homemade heat shield for coolant overflow. It's just a couple layers of tin foil shiny side out, held on with Ultra Black RTV sealant. Works great so far.
Almost done
Finished
Any questions, please feel free to ask here, or pm me. Oh yeah, and it runs great. When we first started it, the lifters were REAL loud. But they had drained down, because the head had been off for several months. After the first drive, they sounded normal. The exhaust sounds like butt now though.....no cat, just straight out through a high quality fart can that sounded great before. I'm going to get a bullet cat in the future, so we'll see how it sounds then. It's pretty sweet hearing the resonance and harmonics of the exhaust flowing through the header though....reminds me of my dads truck that had a built 318 with headers.
I did get a CEL, P 0140. It actually just went away though on my last little jaunt to the grocery story. It'll probably come back. It means "neither rich nor lean mixture detected from 1/2 02 sensor" or something like that. Hrm...maybe it's because I don't have the downstream 02 sensor plugged in to the harness???
lol
all of them.. Good info, ive thought of doin this for a while but i wana go manual 1st