VQ35 Cylinder Head Build and Installation | VQ35 Engine Build Part 2

Welcome back to part two of the VQ35 build and in this part it's everything cylinder heads. Now in this video I'll be showing how to install these cylinder heads along with a lot of the upgrades I threw into this including these beefy stage 3 Brian Kramer cams. Now I'll be covering all the ins and outs in this video along with showing some of the machine work I had done with these, but first let's get into it. Now before I start jumping into all the machining and stuff that goes on with these heads, the first thing I'm actually going to do with these might seem counterintuitive. One thing I actually want to do before actually taking these to get machined and get everything done is I'm going to need to account for the new measurements with new camshafts and new springs. Now specifically what I need to be able to do is account for the actual lifter pads that come in the VQ35. Unlike other engines like my 22R that have adjustable valve trains, basically a VQ35 head isn't adjustable. The way that this works is on the top of the valve sits this kind of puck or bucket and this is basically what makes up the lifter distance between the top of the valve and the load of the camshaft. Now because this is solid and can't really be adjusted, I need to go ahead and account for that spacing now, especially considering I have new camshafts and new springs going into this, but I want to try to use the existing valves. So basically what I'm going to go ahead and do is put in the new valve springs with the new retainers and reuse those existing lifters that came in the VQ35 with the new camshafts and measure the distance between there. Now once I actually have these at the machine shop, the guys there can also measure that valve lash and from there we can basically add reinforcement to those buckets to increase or decrease that distance of the cam load. Now along with all that, I do want to try to reuse the existing valves in this because they look okay, but I am at least going to need the valves to be looked at. Definitely the seats are probably going to need to be adjusted and honed or at least cleaned up. I also want to look at the valve guides if they need to be replaced. Basically just an overall healthy measure of what these heads actually look like and what I can reuse. So what I'm going to do now is go ahead and pull all the old existing springs that come in these heads out and replace them with the new Brian Kramer springs and titanium retainers I have in this kit. Now if you're someone interested in doing a conversion like this or to add new springs or definitely bigger camshafts to a VT35, one of the things you should definitely note are the springs are a bit recessed in the head and to be honest this takes a bit of a specialty tool. I would highly highly recommend that you invest in this if you're considering doing anything like this. The tool in question is definitely a valve keeper remover and installer. Basically what this consists of are these two instruments that coincide that allow you to actually remove the keepers from the retainer itself and this will allow you to actually pull the spring out. The way it works is you basically have this housing that you press over the valve and you hammer it. Now when you hammer it you want to make sure that the actual valve underneath has something to press against or have some type of cushion that way you're actually just compressing the spring and not actually moving the valve. Basically after that with just a hammer you can tap this really hard into the head and it should compress the spring enough and move the retainer down just enough to actually pull those keepers out. Now a little magnet inside this will actually pull those keepers and allow you to just remove the spring entirely. Now the other part of this tool allows for installation of the spring to actually be very very easy and once you have the keepers installed in the retainer you drop this in over the new spring and you want to be able to compress that spring back down allowing those keepers to kind of fall in around the top of that valve stem and lock into those keys. So again if you're looking to do some new springs definitely new camshafts and a vq35 head and you need a tool like this definitely go invest in something like this. It will save you a ton of time and energy and make this a lot easier job. I'll leave a link to how I found this down in the description but definitely go check it out. I'm just going to take a moment and shout out to me from like four years ago when I did the original engine teardown on this vq35 because I labeled everything methodically like even the exhaust rear side of where all of these went. I know at the time it probably seems like I'm being way too over analytical on this and probably like way over the top but sometimes you put a project down for a few years take the extra steps when you're definitely like reassembling stuff or taking things apart and label everything like this you will save yourself tons of time and energy. So let me walk through what all I actually had done at the machine shop. The first thing I definitely had done to my cylinder heads was decking and the idea of this is to make sure that I have a perfectly flat surface on my cylinder heads to mate up to the engine block. Now previously when I had the block also machined I had that decked as well so this is as close to a perfect zero platform for those two mating surfaces along with the new cylinder head gaskets. Now this is something you probably definitely want to do for any type of engine build because definitely for used engines once they go through a bunch of heat cycles those perfectly flat kind of positions that these things have actually start to warp over time. Now warpage introduces different types of imperfections and you can start to run into problems where deflections or imperfections between this and your block will actually create open enough passages for coolant to come into your combustion chambers. Of course this means blowing a head gasket or ultimately hydraulic in your engine so this is a good piece of insurance to always start a new fresh engine build. Now along with that I wanted them to also do a full work over on the valves see both what the condition of the existing valves are if they're good to use and if any type of machining needed to be done to sort of get them back to an original position. Now lucky for me all of the original valves were in really good shape so we kept those and basically just did a valve job on all of them. Now what this basically meant was cleaning up the valves and sort of doing a new grind on them to get that perfect 45 degrees so that they mate and seal really well along with a kind of cleanup and valve job on the valve seats so that those two surfaces meet together very very well. Now this is a really important part with really any engine because if you start to have leaks around your valves you can end up losing a lot of compression and ultimately give up a lot of horsepower. So considering I'm going with bigger cams new springs it only made sense for me to make sure that those were in really good shape especially for the amount of air and fuel I end up wanting to flow in these things. Now along with that I also had them look at the valve guides and all these to make sure that they were in good shape and basically the report back was they looked almost new so I didn't need to buy new ones and reinstall those. Along with that we did throw in new valve seals of course since this is basically a new build so all of that is basically new and fresh and probably even better than what it came from from the factory. Now that's basically all I had done to get this as a clean bill of health and get this as a fresh new build for my VQ35 but some of you are probably wondering about porting and polishing heads for a VQ35. Now I opted out of this because in my own research and seeing what other people had done in builds in the past was basically showing these cylinder heads from factory flow incredibly well. It's part of the reason I bought into the VQ35 architecture is just looking at these intake runners they're huge. These things from factory flow a ton of air and it's really why even from you know an early 2000s 350z they're almost making 300 horsepower for a 3.5 naturally aspirated engine. So basically from my research I was seeing people who had done port and polishing jobs on these to see if there was really even any benefit to it considering how much air they already move and ultimately what I was finding was no there isn't a whole lot of benefit to doing it. Now from what I was finding from different people who've built between naturally aspirated and turboed VQ35s a lot of them were reporting on a dyno only seeing about five to seven horsepower difference. Now I of course didn't do this and I don't have any firsthand experience with someone who actually did do it but if you know of someone who has an astonishing tale of porting and polishing and gaining a ton of horsepower from it let us know down in the comments but really from my research and from my hands-on experience with these heads I don't see a lot benefit to it. So I'm gonna go ahead and get these ready to go back on the VQ35 block. First thing I want to do is take out these camshafts so that I can install them on the new ARP head studs I have going in this thing. Now I'm going with head studs over head bolts mostly because the design of head studs is a lot better and they actually apply a more evenly distributed force across the cylinder head. Bolts sort of work in one direction where they pull the head down to the cylinder block but studs sort of work in both ways clamping both the cylinder block to the head and the head to the cylinder block. Basically what I mean by that is it's an equal distribution of force between the two and the mating surface. Now this helps a lot as it applies a stronger force but also applies a more evenly distributed force across the entire cylinder head. Now why this is really important is because cylinder heads definitely around the actual top of the cylinder are usually the weak spots where not an equal amount of pressure can be distributed and basically those spots get a little bit lighter than the rest of the head. This is where typically head gaskets tend to blow and you end up getting coolant into your combustion chamber. Ultimately you can hydraulic your engine this way. Studs are definitely a stronger way to go and definitely a way to go if you're looking to build performance in an engine. They're an easy cheap upgrade to make and they help improve the engine overall but also add a lot of insurance to your build. So I'm going with ARP studs for all this. They should definitely help clamp these down and definitely help with the new Kometic head gaskets that got going in this thing. So with that I'm gonna get to it. So there you have it. That's a wrap on the cylinder heads for the VQ35. I'm super happy with how these came out and they look absolutely amazing being back on this engine. Now I'm definitely looking forward to throwing on a lot of the other things like the cam sensors and some of the other upgrades I have coming down the road but I think a lot of that I'll end up saving for a video where I tackle more of the top end of this engine including intake, fuel rails, and ignition. Now next for this will definitely be a lot of the timing chain accessory stuff so that'll be in the next upcoming video along with probably some other upgrades I'll throw into this on the bottom end and a couple more things I got here for the back end including flywheel and clutch setup. So definitely stay tuned for all that. I'm really looking forward to what all this engine is going to be once it's done and hopefully you following along are as excited as I am. So thank you all so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. Definitely stay tuned for what's coming up on this but until next time I'll see you in the next video.