The Mighty Spyder Cylinder heads revealed! Pics within!

MASSIVE TYPE IV · Post by **MASSIVE TYPE IV** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:47 pm

For those of you that have been keeping up with this project you know I have been working on an Ultimate Super Hero that couples a short stroke (69mm) to a 105.07 bore for "The Mighty Spyder" for about a year now..

Well the engine is about done and we decided to post some pics of the heads that Len has created for this baby. First and foremost you must understand that these heads are NOT the New Generation heads that we have been raving about for the last few weeks! These heads employ some of Len's ideas that went into the "New Generation" heads but thats all...

Len can tell you all about the heads, I'll show you the pictures!

Also here are some pics of the coach built, made by hand 100% Aluminum body that the 1200 pound, 5 speed beast has.More of them can be found on my site here
http://www.aircooledtechnology.com/gall ... index.html

The car is now finished, painted and ready for the engine. I'll be done with it in about 2 weeks. Beth and I will be travelling to the UK and then on to Leman for the debut of the car the first of July at the Classic Leman and I can't wait!

Now here are the heads- Len did ALL THIS WORK BY HAND!

and here is the "Money shot"..... This is our newest exhaust port shape, and we already have special stub pipes made for it exclusively.. This is primarily to be used with Turbocharging. This changes all the rules. Len rocks!

There ya have it... more pics are here http://www.aircooledtechnology.com/galleries/msheads

***Valvetrain not pictured for proprietary reasons***

Can Drive Soon · Post by **Can Drive Soon** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:04 pm

Very nice heads, love the twin plug ignition.

All those coatings..

HAM Inc · Post by **HAM Inc** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:44 pm

Nice photos Jake! My digital camera won't get close to taking a close-up of that kind of quality.

I must say that I am very relieved to have the Mighty Spyder project successfully completed. The stress of trying to develop a cylinder head worthy of such a creation was intense! The order from Jake was a head that is capable of revving to 8500 AND make power up there on a 2392cc engine, on pump gas to boot!

This required a lot of blank sheet work. I had already envisioned an ex. port similar to the one in the photos for Jakes turbo R&D, where a 85% head with excellent exhaust system sealing is required. Seeing that we have already maxxed out the oval ports potential, and given the grave concerns I have about using Sq.Ports on turbo engines, this port shape was a natural evolution. It utilizes a giant copper gasket and seriously H.D. stainless stubs.

When I determined the intake flow required to feed this beast it became obvious that my turbo ex. port would be perfect. Now, I have achieved the kind of ex. flow #'s required for this project from an oval port. But frankly the finished port damn near eliminated the ability to seal the systen to the head. Not to mention the decreased cross- section of the port walls near the port exit.

The thing that encouraged me the most about this shape is that once the head was finished and flowed I found that the ports were perfectly balanced without having to remove any additional material from the ex ports. And there is a LOT of room for increased flow from this configuration, meaning we can support much bigger N.A. engines and some pretty large turbo engines with this port, without sacrificing the systems seal to the head, or longevity of the seal. The flow we achieved with this conservatively ported design is right there with the flow from a seriously "hogged" oval port or sq. port.

For this new project I developed a new intake insulator that will accomodate the giant D shaped ports. I was so impressed with the results of heat testing of the phenolic material that I went ahead and designed new insulators for more comventional T4's as well as carb base insulators for IDF and Solex 40P-11's, as well as intake insulators for 912's. In addition to my heat test', Jake tested these on the HotVW's 2270 engine. The results were significant heat reduction in the carbs and intake manifolds. I was able to wrap my hand around one of the intake manifolds while the CHT's were pushing 300*'s! And this was while the engine was idling, so the mans weren't being cooled by a fast moving intake charge. These insulators will be available through the T4 Store.

I won't bore everyone with the details of the development of these heads, but I will point out that no less than 6 heads were sacrificed to R&D of these units! And I will never know how many sleepless nights!

HAM Inc · Post by **HAM Inc** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:00 pm

Okay, here are the flow #'s at 28"s:
Lift Intake Exhaust
.050 39.6 30.7
.100 68.1 58.3
.150 97.3 89.3
.200 126.0 109.6
.250 149.8 125.9
.300 169.6 136.4
.350 186.9 141.7
.400 202.1 145.1
.450 217.4 148.4
.500 229.6 150.3
.550 237.1 151.8

I would love to be able to throw more lift at this engine as the intake graph is still climbing pretty fast. If we could run more lift the ex. flow could be bumped up to match the higher peak intake flow.

Can Drive Soon · Post by **Can Drive Soon** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:36 pm

After much work here we are!

RG64 · Post by **RG64** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:46 pm

Jake or Len, does the coating stay in the valve seats and cylinder sealing surfaces???

Rick

MASSIVE TYPE IV · Post by **MASSIVE TYPE IV** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:55 pm

We remove some of it and leave some...

Wally · Post by **Wally** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:12 am

Very impressive and very cool that this has been shared. I think it will benefit us all in the end

Len, I noticed you used a stock VW head casting for these. Are the old stock VW castings just as good as a new one from AMC?

Tnx,
Walter

MASSIVE TYPE IV · Post by **MASSIVE TYPE IV** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:09 am

As Len stated, he had to chop up several heads to make these heads up and we didn't want to chop up AMC castings at 300 bucks each! The castings are different enough that comparing them to an OEM head was not possible.

The OEM heads that we used for these beasts were cherry and only had about 40K miles on them.

werka · Post by **werka** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:40 am

Just interested in what the white coating is on the inside of the heads?

Also, in Atlanta, there is a vw shop near dobbins AFB (off of Delk Road) and I remember that they had an aluminum car (possibly a spider also). It has been a couple years since I was there. They did pretty good work from what I saw and even had a vert ghia chopped in half to restore crappy heater channels (and fabricate some of the internals to the heater channels themselves).

Anyhow, thought this might be of some interest to you.

MASSIVE TYPE IV · Post by **MASSIVE TYPE IV** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:50 am

The coatings are Thermal Dispersant and Thermal Barrier coatings applied and blended exclusively for us through a "local" NASCAR shop. We have been working with coatings for 3+ years and finally found a combination that really works and doesn't have drawbacks.

The thermal barrier coatings reflect heat back into the chamber so it is not soaked into the heads. We couple this with a similar coating on the pistons that also reflects the heat back toward the charge and this keeps piston temps lower. The end result is more efficiency that we have measuerd in BSFC numbers that are lower than like engines without coatings. These coatings make a bit more power as well.

The exterior coating is a Thermal Dispersant coating that heps the head shed heat into the cooling air stream faster. This blend used on the Spyder heads REALLY works well and you can tell a difference in the oven with a coated and non coated head. The coated head, once removed will drop temps drastically faster than the non coated head. I have measured this directly in total amazement.

To learn more about our coating program see our R&D pages at http://www.aircooledtechnology.com/research.htm under coatings, and more specialty coatings.

These coatings are only available on Super Hero engines. None of our retail parts, engine kits or typical engines benefit from these coatings. This is due to cost, and the time consuming issues the coatings create for us. We are finishing the very last batch of typical engines that will benefit from these coatings next week.

Coatings are not created equally- They have caused us more problems to perfect than any process I can remember.

HAM Inc · Post by **HAM Inc** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:51 am

The castings used for this project were cherry, to say the least. Another consideration in our choice of castings was the remote possibility that as this vehicle goes through customs in various foreign ports of entry the absence of an O.E. casting # MIGHT be a problem. We even converted to three intake studs because the engine is listed as a 2.0. Talk about attention to detail!

Future Mighty Spyder copies (these heads are listed in Jakes catalog) will be based on new castings, as will all future heads, with very few exceptions, coming out of HAM Inc. I will make exceptions on a case by case basis with most being SCCA race heads, which aren't allowed aftermarket castings.

The condition of used castings has been going steadily down hill over the past couple of years, with many having been passed through other machine (butcher) shops before arriving at mine. It is no big secret that the better the condition of the casting we start with, the better the finished product. Plus customers want to know ahead of time how much their heads are going to cost ( I would too). That has gotten to be a real pain as I have been burned by quotes given based on customer info only to find that the castings need more repairs than expected. It makes for some hard feelings and wasted shipping expense when heads are returned to the customer because he can't afford the addtional repairs.
I've had couple of customers rack up rediculous shipping expenses as they shipped several pairs to me hoping that one of them would be cheap enough to rebuild.

Enough is enough. The addtional cost of our product offerings based on new castings is only slighty higher than refurbishing used castings, and in many cases it is cheaper. And if you want to talk abut quality! Don't even get me started. LOL

Jake and I sat down recently and fleshed out all of our popular units for his new catalog. We included two offerings that are specifically targeted at budget engines. These units sell for much less than they did just a year ago. The new catalog has something for damn near every budget.

Ain't technology grand?!

Pat Gratton · Post by **Pat Gratton** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:27 am

Jake or Len,

If the thermal barrier coatings reflect heat back into the chamber did you run into problems with detonation and have to restrict the compression ratios using pump gas with what that could have been a higher ratio without the coatings? Or does the scavaging prevent any problems before the temps. rise high enough to cause detonation?

MASSIVE TYPE IV · Post by **MASSIVE TYPE IV** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:50 am

These coatings were not applied to cure an issue. They are utilized to open doors further for performance and efficiency gains.

I have not had a single detonatiion issue in 5+ years. This is proven by the implementation of a J&S safeguard unit on the dyno that senses detonation on every engine we test.

It's all in the combo.

MASSIVE TYPE IV · Post by **MASSIVE TYPE IV** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:21 pm

I just read this on the Spyderclub where I also posted these pics....
It's from the Mighty Spyder himself..

Jake doesn't know it yet, but when he gets to France in July for the Classic Le Mans series, I've booked him a once-only drive on the circuit (just one lap) so that he may test the little beauty for himself. There will be others on the track too, so not at racing speeds, just a gentle poodle.