Stage 1,2,3,4,head.What is the difference????

[hoggie]

Can anyone tell me what the difference is between stage 1,2,3,4 on a head.I presume bhp but how much.Thanks

[Ant]

If only it were so simple dude.

Anyone quoting work like this, should be able to provide a breakdown of what is done for each stage, and the costs/gains involved.

The whole "stage ?" thing, never made sense to me

[Turbo-Brown]

It's mostly bollocks hoggie.

It's just the relative amount of effort people put into working on a head.

Completely agree with Ant on this!

'Stage 1' might be just a clean up that you or I could do with limited knowledge and skill, 'Stage X+1' might be "full race" but that could be supported by years of experience with a particular engine and flow data collected over those years so the specialist knows exactly what to remove and where from.....or it could be some twat with a rotary file making the ports as big as he can whilst managing to decrease flow at the same time.

Buyer beware!

[jaistanley]

I'm blaming the Mini accessory and tuning places for the 'Stage x' type tuning. For them you could buy different collections of tuning parts for different ammounts of money, coining the phrase.

Basic head tuning: increase radius of inner port face, match valve seats to port diameter, triple cut valves, remove rough surface finish. That lot 'should' see you 50-75% of the maximum returns you'll see from head work. It's not a 'black art' but doing 2 lots of 6 ports the same way will require skill that needs to be nurtured.

I vote: Find an old boy who has been tuning (with a flow bench and dyno!!!!) for years and have him do the work for you. Avoid 'staged' heads as they smack of marketting twaddle to me.

I did all of the above (and a bit more) to a 1.8 16v golf head and fitted it to a 2.0 (ABF) bottom end and it was NUTS. Great fun and the feeling of satisfaction from taking a methodical approach to tuning your own vehicle will make it feel loads faster than it is anyway!!!

Good luck Hombré..

Jai

Jai

[hoggie]

Thanks guys,the "staged" head on offer were from Fritzs bits they seem to know what they are about.also they were on a recent edition of PBMW magazine does anybody rate them or know what they are like??

[Kos]

over priced products none of them proven