Porsche 911 Heads and Cam Towers
While I was assembling the pistons and cylinders, I sent my cam towers to my machine shop to get cleaned up, drilled, and tapped for threaded spray bar plugs.
This way I can remove the spray bars and clean them out in the future much like the engine case and crankshaft threaded plugs.
Before installing the heads and cam towers I needed to install the cylinder air deflector tins. They were solid parts but had some flaky paint and surface rust which were strictly forbidden on this engine build.
I tried to sand them and quickly gave up. Sanding sucks, even with compressed air.
Luckily I managed to locate a sandblasting cabinet I could access. I then blasted and painted my cooling tins with VHT satin black.
Cooling tins installed.
I then dropped in head gasket rings.
Next I dropped on the heads with head stud nuts snugged down, then backed off a bit to allow the heads to slide around and align with the cam tower dowel pin holes. Once the cam towers are on, the heads will be locked in their final positions relative to the cam towers and to each other. Lastly I added the oil return tubes.
I cleaned and prepped the cam tower and head bonding surfaces one last time and got all the hardware and tools together. This was a similar process to the engine case assembly, but thankfully on a smaller scale.
Ready, set, GO! Applied the ooey gluey Threebond 1184 and got cracking before it set up.
Torque-torque-torqued everything per the crazy torque sequence in the rebuild book. A Pelican Parts forum elder recommended I put the camshaft inside the cam tower as I torqued the fasteners to verify the cam tower did not distort and cause the cam to bind in its bores. The camshaft was in place to make sure it moved freely.
I then final-torqued the head studs and the cam still rotated freely. This side was done.
The next day I repeated the same process for the other side.
Done.
It was so satisfying to see the engine parts stack-up get bigger and bigger. The light at the end of the tunnel was definitely getting brighter and brighter.
I could not help but notice how pretty the engine was from this view. Slightly asymmetrical with Art Deco/Streamline Moderne styling touches on many of the parts. This engine would look right at home in the nose of a Schneider Cup racing seaplane. They definitely don’t style machines with this kind of attention to detail anymore.
By now I had grown tired of those chains dangling about in testicular fashion, so chain box installation is next…