TUFFTR
I only recomended the VR4 heads as you kind of indicated money save was most importent. You can really onlly do mild port and polish on the VR4 heads or a port match as these heads do not have enough beef to do much more that that. If you wish to do a good set of heads, you will need to have the NA heads worked. Some of the best motors in the world have come from your neck of the woods. Take you time and try to find a head guy out there with a good rep and talk with him. My heads were done by Wells Racing and they are not Mitsu guys at all. They for the most part build big block race engines. But there head guy was one of the best at the time we had our heads done. So we used there service. Do not get used valves and springs. You might consider a used set of stage 3 heads that have allready been fully worked and can be had from a part out. That might be a good deal. But buyer be ware. If you are really going to go through the trouble of going after what might be the best motor you can build for your self, please take the time to do it right. What an other year. LoL. This is not something you can take take lightly or scrimp on. Do it, or do not. Kind of like buying 3 really good tires. I don't think you would do that, would you. Same , same.
I did not build my motor all at once. But I did try to do it in steps that would allow me to take advantage of each step and see more power each time along the way. There was no sence for me to get big cams if the heads could not breath. No sense in doing heads if we could not corrct for AFRs. So an AFC Neo was first. next came all the head work. That was the biggest cost and got it out of the way. About 2 grand complete. The heads allowed my stock cams to come alive. Damn those stock cams made a ton of low end torque. Next was exhaust, than headers. Ran like that for about 2 years saving for the next step. Car was realy fun to drive at that point. from there I had to decide what was next. Not what to add next. what was it that we were going after. Was this to be a drag car? or a road course car? Or just street monster? If I ask you what are your goals, you will say more power and maybe just how much. That is not an answer. You can not build a drag motor and run it on a road course or circle track. Not going to happen. It will not last. Can't build an endurance motor and take it rock climbing or it will not perform well under those conditions and will not last. You must know what you goals are, the application you wish to use your car most and your expectations. You sure as hell may not won't what I have. It may not be right for you. You can build a motor for Max GRUNT low end power or high RPM throttle responce. It will be hard to do both. Not going to happen. I have chosen the latter. I am an RPM NUT and I do not recommend this for everyone. Good example would be 2005 Grand Prix motor. 3.0 liter V10 that make 840 hp at 18,700 red line but only 300 ft lbs torque. No torque needed at those RPMs. Could not drag race with that motor. get my point. You must decide on the application and build for it. Last year I jumpoed the gun and had endurance cams made. I did not have the intake to support such cams and was a waist of time. Too much too soon. So now I have backed down to the HKS 272s and life is good. I have the intake and exhaust to support these cams and all is working OK. Do not get ahead of your self like I did. Slow down and take your time. Take each step one at a time and complete that step. If you cut corners, you are just spending money with little results.
x2percentmilk
As I was explaning to TUFFTR. I can not give a best bolt on for power. Let me explain. Your engine and driveline are a packaged deal. It was ment for John Q public. Saftey, performance and reliability, at an affordable price was the goal. Now you wish to alter that. A good bolt on like turbos or blowers will force the motor to run well above the intended uses of this drive line package and can work well. There is a cost to do it right however and is not cheap. Your other alternitive is to alter the package. This is what we are doing. This package altering is just as costly and can hurt or even fail if nopt done correctly. Just as a turbo car that run lean and melts pistons, we can huirt the NA package as well. You must have a goal as stated earlier. You must be able to tune you mods as a bad tune will make all you work for not. It is tuning that makes or brakes power. Your ECU was designed to compensate for most all normal driving conditions and normal are and tare on the motor. Once you begin altering the peaces it was ment to work with the ECU may not be able to compensate for you mods. This is what happens and why we need some way to alter what the ECU is seeing. That what these tuners do. It allows us to fool the ECU. The AFC stuff works well. Even the little NEO worked good for us. I just ended up going a different rout so I use something else at this time. And x2percentmilk, you are not understanding your tunner. We can cover that latter. I can help, but this is already too long. This is a lot of food for thought and there are some out there that might just disagree with all that I have just spit out, And that's OK. These forums are to help us stay on track with our thoughts and help us make usefull decission about what we might or might not do.
