So I went ahead and dropped the cylinder head off at the machine shop yesterday for valve seals and a resurface... Since I don't have a mill or valve spring compressors, I figure I might as well not rebuild this head myself. I could have done it... but I'd rather have them clean it out than waste a whole day and $30 worth of 2+2 cleaning it. No need for porting it or anything else. The intake ports are already too big for their own good.

Since I don't have the block or the head in my possession, this past week was time to put myself to good use on other things. I cleaned up the thermostat housing, valve cover, crank pulley, water pump pulley, throttle body, intake manifold, oil pan, turbo and oil drain tube.

When I was done with all of that, I wasn't real happy with the parts I picked to build the "spare" 14b. I have a dead Big16g, a couple of exhaust housings (one that's heavily ported and tricked out with an over-sized wastegate, and 2 pretty old cracked-up stock piles of junk), 2 good 14b compressor housings, and a rusty old wastegate actuator.



I bought a pair of snap-ring pliers so I could do some detail work and milk every last hp out of this tiny little turbo. If you ever order a "polished compressor housing" from a performance shop, for some reason the outside is polished and that $150 you spent yields NO horsepower. If you looked at the inside, it's extremely rough. That roughness creates friction as compressed air swirls around inside it. The result of friction is heat, and people do everything they can on a boosted car to cool the intake charge.




Nobody ever wants to polish the inside of the compressor housing. If you want it polished, you pretty much have to do it yourself. You have to know your tools and how to do it. It takes 6-8 hours to get it looking like this, and it's tedious detail work. I don't plan on keeping this turbo for very long, but since all my other stuff was at the shop, and I have nothing else to do... I might as well...



Here's the difference...



And here's the completed 14b with polished compressor housing, 5cm exhaust housing ported to 7cm, and 22mm wastegate flapper ported to 34mm. The actuator was a rusty POS, but it worked just fine, and I broke the shiny new one that was on my big16g... so I wire-brushed it and painted it, putting it back to good use.



Hopefully all these extra tricks eliminate boost creep and provide me with a few extra horses. Not bad for a "junk" turbo eh? One of my friends is giving me a tubular manifold. I'm ready to rock & roll as soon as I get all my parts back. I'm supposed to start getting them tomorrow... er... today...

I need to learn how to sleep at night. My new job starts Monday. Wish me luck!!!