New head possibilities?

[TheCafeKid]

While you may be able to find a head for around $50, the condition of such will be unknown to you, unless of course you go about checking the wear of the cams and journals, journal bearing caps, etc etc. You cant swap heads and just toss your cams in there. Well, you CAN, but you might be asking for massive trouble down the road. As you may well know, those are parts that wear together. As such, installing your cams in another head may cause rapid degredation of the bearings and/or journals. This would be bad news, as you'd be back to square one. You might get lucky and find a head with the cams in it, but these EBay nutcases seem to think that selling the head without the cams will yeild them more cash. (when really they end up sitting on both parts because people who do this type of stuff on the regular know the dangers) In a pinch, I have put cams from one bike into another, but to be honest, the score there is 1-1. One survived, one snapped immediately. Dunno the cause for sure, but im sure it didnt help. I would suggest pulling the head, taking it to the shop and having them do you up right. You can get the deck checked while youre at it, and inspect the other parts of the head.

At any rate, to answer your ORIGINAL question, to my knowlege, NONE of the 16v heads are transferable to 8v blocks. Simply wont work without a bunch of machining. And at that rate, its not worth it.

[mpls-ugly]

Thank you cafekid, That was the answer I assumed I would get to my original question but thanks for clarifying that. Changing heads is not something i "want" to do it is a last resort. And it will remain a last resort. Now I guess Ill continue my hunt for a capable machine shop in the Minneapolis area.

[Don-lo]

Do you have access to a welder? There was a thread from someone who built up the bolt with weld and it came out every time. The heat helps break it loose, he said. IF you break off an easy-out in there, using weld should still work.

[first timer]

While you may be able to find a head for around $50, the condition of such will be unknown to you, unless of course you go about checking the wear of the cams and journals, journal bearing caps, etc etc. You cant swap heads and just toss your cams in there. Well, you CAN, but you might be asking for massive trouble down the road. As you may well know, those are parts that wear together. As such, installing your cams in another head may cause rapid degredation of the bearings and/or journals. This would be bad news, as you'd be back to square one. You might get lucky and find a head with the cams in it, but these EBay nutcases seem to think that selling the head without the cams will yeild them more cash. (when really they end up sitting on both parts because people who do this type of stuff on the regular know the dangers) In a pinch, I have put cams from one bike into another, but to be honest, the score there is 1-1. One survived, one snapped immediately. Dunno the cause for sure, but im sure it didnt help. I would suggest pulling the head, taking it to the shop and having them do you up right. You can get the deck checked while youre at it, and inspect the other parts of the head.

At any rate, to answer your ORIGINAL question, to my knowlege, NONE of the 16v heads are transferable to 8v blocks. Simply wont work without a bunch of machining. And at that rate, its not worth it.

I don't see a problem swapping cams, if your thoughts held true then all the drag racers and racer who use aftermarket cams would have snapped heads and cams. It is more important to use the orginal cam retainers from the matching head. The retainers are line bored and unique to each head.

[drhach]

If the cams are in spec and the journals are in spec no worries, right? Personally, I just think that you would risk so many other things by buying a used head. It may need the valve faces resurfaced, possibly the guides are shot, probably the valve seals. I would certainly expect to do a valve job and replace seals on any used head that I bought, no matter what the seller said about it. Of course, you would also mic the cam journals and the cams. I'm sure CafeKid did that before he installed a random set of cams .

[TheCafeKid]

I don't see a problem swapping cams, if your thoughts held true then all the drag racers and racer who use aftermarket cams would have snapped heads and cams. It is more important to use the orginal cam retainers from the matching head. The retainers are line bored and unique to each head.

Yes but the cams drag racers use are NEW. Im not saying it will always happen, but its not something i would advise doing unless no other resort is viable. Thats not the case in this instance. The head can be removed and the offending bolt taken out by a half way competent machine shop.

[retired optec]

broken exhaust bolt

I had the same think on my gk when I bought it. The guy before me tried to drill it out and it went off center. I used a die grinder and a chain sharpening stone in my die grinder. It took two stones but I was able to center the hole and use a thread tap to clean out threads. I was left with threads half way down because of the way they tried to drill it out. I used a longer bolt and shortened it to work. So far it has not come loose after 300 miles.

[Nessism]

I’m in the process of refurbishing an 8V 1000 head because the valve to guide clearance is above the service limit on many of the valves – mostly on the exhaust side.

Machine shop quotes to change the valve guides and do a valve job put the bill in the $400 range. As an experiment of sorts, a GSR member is going to loan me his valve seat cutting tools so I can try my hand at replacing the valve guides and touching up the seats. While this is developing I recently took a flyer on a used head off ebay for $63 shipped - bike that had 26k miles on it. Fortunately, this new-used head is in pretty good shape; the guides are decent so a simple lapping job should suffice. A guy could roll the dice several times buying used cylinder heads and still not crack the range of paying a machine shop to refurb a worn one. Not advocating this approach per say but if a low mileage head is available, it’s worth taking a chance.

[mpls-ugly]

Im not to happy about the whole mess and I think I may have a way to secure the flange without the bolt via some custom brackets and such. I dont have a lot of hope for it but if i can get it to work and dont need to pull the head at all I would be very happy. Thanks for the input to all of you. Ill let you know what happens in the end.

[Commodus]

Im not to happy about the whole mess and I think I may have a way to secure the flange without the bolt via some custom brackets and such. I dont have a lot of hope for it but if i can get it to work and dont need to pull the head at all I would be very happy. Thanks for the input to all of you. Ill let you know what happens in the end.

I can not imagine that making a custom bracket would be easier than removing the broken bolt, ezout or no.

Carbide will work, edm will work, welding will work, good HSS will probably work, cobalt will work, etc.

These have all already been covered in this thread. Is there perhaps something especially unusual about this situation? Maybe a picture would help?

As an aside, this is why everyone should have a machinist friend

[mpls-ugly]

No, Im good i know what's going on here. I know what my options are people keep posting so....whatever no big deal?