Holy Mother of shits

Guys I have teh best news. A CA18DE head will fit perfect on a CA20E motor all you have to do is find a new crankshaft gear and get a longer timing belt and you car will be sick. Ok well it migth not be that easy but lisen .
Went to the junk yard found a CA20DE head of a sentra i think it was and i bough it along w the intake manifold so i was like wat the hell il take it off just for fun and by my suprise the water jackets and teh oil hole matched perfect to my car so i bough it swaped it on(w a few extra steps) and now well to say if i had a camera i can trip 3 gear and beat a crx w ease just a thougth but i think i lucked out

Wait, you've already got the head on????

There's been a few people who tried it, and the problems they ran into were (like you said) the crank gear, which can be custom made fairly easily, and then when you do find the correct timing belt, you have to figure out a way to make the tensioners work. The CA20 only has space for one tensioner, you need two on a DOHC head...

Please if you did this, I need some pics BAD!!!! :D

Wait, you've already got the head on????

There's been a few people who tried it, and the problems they ran into were (like you said) the crank gear, which can be custom made fairly easily, and then when you do find the correct timing belt, you have to figure out a way to make the tensioners work. The CA20 only has space for one tensioner, you need two on a DOHC head...

Please if you did this, I need some pics BAD!!!! :D

:werd: i'd like to see some pics too!!

oh and :honda:

what kind of gains would you see from having a dohc head?

a lil bit more power and the ability to rev higher...but isn't htat it?

Wait, you've already got the head on????

There's been a few people who tried it, and the problems they ran into were (like you said) the crank gear, which can be custom made fairly easily, and then when you do find the correct timing belt, you have to figure out a way to make the tensioners work. The CA20 only has space for one tensioner, you need two on a DOHC head...

Please if you did this, I need some pics BAD!!!! :D

weird my det has only one tensioner?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hmmm... Well OK, I've been wrong before... :mrgreen: I was just going by what someone said on another board that tried it... :laugh:

Oh, and the DOHC has MUCH MUCH better flow characteristics. If you've ever seen a CA SOHC head, it's pretty sorry. Little peanut ports as I like to call em... :laugh:

weird my det has only one tensioner?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yeah exactly u do not need to tensioner i do have the head it has been put on but i took it off overythign bolted up good i didnt turn the car on since all the stuff on the head was a little bit dirty. But soon i will be putting it on. The way u can find the belt is measure ok take a roap and measure teh leangth tehn go to auto zone and tell them the leangth. It bolted up fine but liek i said i never turned th car on so but i will keep u all posted

yea you only need one on a DOHC engine. My mr2 only had one tensioner too.

yea you only need one on a DOHC engine. My mr2 only had one tensioner too.

yeah well very good guys we are a team YES hah but i still think the ca20e head is good stating that it has duel valve spring which means thast it is safer and biger gains and revs can be acomplished since u dont have to wory much about the floating of valves. The reason for the DOHC would be for the purpose of faster reves. Tru it does allow air to com and leave a lot faster than a SOHC could.

That is AWESOME! I wanted to do it before, but after reading about the other guy doing it, I kinda changed my mind.

What are you gonna do about the spark though? No distributor on the DOHC head...

Well the bad part about the CA20 is the tiny intake ports, which make it kinda hard to make big power...

Well the bad part about the CA20 is the tiny intake ports, which make it kinda hard to make big power...

That is tru tiny ports can be fixed by porting and polishing the posrts
have u ever seen the exaust ports tehy are very badly ported
ther is plenty of room fro improvment.

Oh yeah hmm glad u brought up the distributor prob. I think of teh top of my head mabey u can add a coil to every spark plug mabey i will have to sleep on that

ok i was thinking about my friends chevy and he said that his distributor goes to the oil pump well mabey u coudl drill a hole in the oil pan and put the distributor in ther so ir woud line up th ea gear ont he crank shaft

Hmmm... Only way I know to go to a DIS is to run a standalone engine management system like an Electromotive or equivalent setup. That's what I was planning on doing, and now that you told me everything bolts right up, I might be going back to that plan... :laugh:

yeah i thougth of that too till i looked up teh price. Plus along with all the trouble. But no matter wat when i do have enought money it will be done

2 things

1. what are you going to do about the head not haveing a distributor(unless this head does, but i havent seen one yet)

2. unless you have a s12 that doesnt have a rev limiter like most of our cars do then the dohc really wont due much other then slow you down,, remember a dohc cam gains all its power up top 4-8or9k rpms if you are limited to 6k like most of us are then you will lose ottom with the dohc and not gain much up top... i bet you if you ported the hell out of the sohc head you'd be surprised at hos it opens up a shitload of power throughout the rpm range

my car has no 6k rev limiter... i've had it to many 7k shifts and its all stock as far as computer stuff goes...

my car has no 6k rev limiter... i've had it to many 7k shifts and its all stock as far as computer stuff goes...

This is tru i have been reading up alot on these cars and none of them i have ever heard that have a rev limiter i have aftermarket valve springs and i shift at 7.5 all day long.
As for the no distributor deal if u read this post i belive it has been solved

hahahah ... solved

Drilling a hole in your oil pan to run the dizzy? Off what? Little toothed crankshaft gnomes?

"add a coil to each spark plug"

uhh ... sure. And why not mount 4 plunger switches so you can activate them manually?

But but but ... you had it on and beat a CRX.

Sure you did. What did you use as
intake manifold,
exhaust manifold
ECU
Injectors, rail ...

DOHC does not make you faster. In fact in most cases you will be faster with a SOHC. DOHC motors have a lot more reciprocating weight. Your motor now has to spin 2 cams and twice as much of a valvetrain. Yes, DOHC have more valves, but the valves are smaller.

This is really nice in a turbo application where you can stuff air into the motor, but if you're relying on a ca20e to suck enough air ... heh.

And no, the SOHC head can't really be ported very far at all. A cam will go way further to making big power than swapping in a stock DOHC pulsar head.

I was able to open the ports up marginally, but tapping the head out for larger valves is out of the question.

excuse the shitty pics, it was dark, and the flash from my camera was lighting up the polished parts too much.

Unported exhaust side

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/unportedex.jpg

Unported intake
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/unportedin.jpg

Untouched bowl
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/unportedcham.jpg

Mid port In
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/portedin.jpg

Mid port ex
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/portedexh.jpg

Here I backlit the intake to show the port better
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/backlitin.jpg

Step/ridge removed from bowl
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/8swirl.jpg

Finished bowls
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/mr200/200sx/swirl.jpg

Yeah, Mr 200 I'me with you. I've been trying to follow the facts in this thread and its making my head hurt. You would have to be some kind of sadist to pull your cylinder head "just for the hell of it". What diffefernce would a coil on each plug make? other than a gaping hole in your bank account? You would still need something to time the spark or you would detonate your engine (detonation, preignition? I can't remember) really badly.
I have tried to make sense of this put Its just not happening so could you please explain what you have done, what you are planning to do and how you plan to pull it off. Thanks.

Yeah I'm not following him too good either, but this is what I was thinking about.

I'm building a turbo motor, and I've been considering putting the CA18DE head on for the better flowing ports. Yes, it does have much better flowing intake ports. If I do it, I'm gonna run a standalone ecu which will control the DIS.

The standalone offers MUCH finer tuning than what is available with the stock ecu.

Now if it's an NA motor, I don't think the DOHC head will buy much, especially with the stock CA20 bottom end, which really isn't built for high revs anyway. And as far as the valve size, the two small valves flow a heck of a lot more than the one big valve. The sacrifice is bottom end. So if you want a good torquey motor, build a SOHC 8V. If you want a high revver, build a DOHC. That's the way I see it.

I dunno, my wedge enjoys 7K RPM ... but

Yeah ... the DE head is the way to go for flow

but, I think (not you guys, others) are unde the impression that ca18 or ca20e + ca18de head = ca18de

add turbo and you have the magical ca18det

but BTW, if you do decide to go that route, get the ca18de head, and run ca16de cams.

I think it can be done, I'm just getting sick of posts like this that promise it can, but don't tell us anything.

I've heard too many different things to make a decision.

I've been told the water jackets DON'T line up, that the cams don't work with the crank pulley, etc etc etc

Short of doing it myself, which I don't feel like anyway ... we're really back to where we started

I dunno, my wedge enjoys 7K RPM ... but

Yeah ... the DE head is the way to go for flow

but, I think (not you guys, others) are unde the impression that ca18 or ca20e + ca18de head = ca18de

add turbo and you have the magical ca18det

but BTW, if you do decide to go that route, get the ca18de head, and run ca16de cams.

I think it can be done, I'm just getting sick of posts like this that promise it can, but don't tell us anything.

I've heard too many different things to make a decision.

I've been told the water jackets DON'T line up, that the cams don't work with the crank pulley, etc etc etc

Short of doing it myself, which I don't feel like anyway ... we're really back to where we started
In my opinion we are further behind because now we also have misconseptions. Now according to Nissan, the CA16D and the CA18D have the same cam style, and hookups, but different profiles (hence the improvement) butto be sure somebody still has to try it...8)

Yeah, I hear ya on that one. Like I said, I'm gonna try it, and then we'll have some real info. I have to check on the head that's out at our other shop. Not sure if it's a CA16DE or CA18DE, but I'll grab it (the block has a hole in where a rod decided it wanted to exit :laugh: ), and then we'll know for sure. I think for the crank gear I might just make a spacer for it with spaces for the keyways...

But I'll check the water and oil passages first.

And I have heard that the CA16DE cams are better, but my spec sheets only list the lift specs for the CA16DE cams, which is .335. So unless someone knows the lift on the CA18 cams, guess that doesn't help much... :laugh:

Yeah, we really don't need anymore "My buddy said he knew a guy who did it, I swear" type of stuff. A friend of mine runs a wrecking yard and I will see if he will let me root around with these parts and compare them side by side and when I figure out for a concrete fact whether it will work or not I'll let you guys know.

well i i have to say is the dohc will work w a stand alone ingnition and im done with this thread cause ppl wanna be asshoel and think they know it all

i think it would be easyer to just swap the whole motor in at this point, standalone? are we kidding? you could get a ca18det shipped to your door for that cost, this doesnt seem like a realistic head swap.... im just going to except that these are not honda motors, and dont fit eachother like legos ;)

Well, the only thing about the standalone is if you're running turbo and planning on making some big power and boost numbers, you'd probably need the standalone anyway, so then it would make a little more sense. But it's true, you can get a ca18det for pretty cheap especially since nobody wants them anymore... :frown:

Now I've been going back and forth on the standalone issue for a while, but that's whether I go sohc or dohc, because I'm planning on pushing out some serious hp, and I'm not sure if the stock ecu will keep up like I want it to. So for me, the advantage of the dohc seems like enough that if I'm gonna do standalone anyway, it's worth it. Don't know if that made any sense or not... :mrgreen: :dontknow:

Found out a little more about this... Was searching through some forums looking for info on the CA16DE, and found this:

http://www.antrx.com/fraz/ca20de/ca20de.jpg

He's got the CA18DE head on the CA20E bottom end, had to drill and tap an extra hole for the tensioner. Also found some pretty interesting stuff on this thread:

http://www.nissanexa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9207&page=1&pp=20

I'll post more tomorrow, going home early today, feel like total crap... :frown:

speedy_nissan is a moron he has no pictures and i would bet a thousand dollars he has not done this honestly if you show me a video of your de head running on your car i will pay pal you 1000 dollars usdm .. why do you gotta bullshit and make stuff up ????? BAN THIS KID

Dude, calm down! :laugh:

I can't see any reason to ban him, it's just something that happens on the net... Just gotta deal with it...

Heh, he's not as entertaining as "Ye Who Shall Remain Nameless"

this is more edu-taining than anything else.

Joel, just because I can't remember what post I was writing this in, but the ca16de I was looking at has a distributor setup just like ours.

Unfortunately I didn't get a good look at it (they stack cars) so I don't know the orientation ... it might put the distributor aiming at the firewall.

Yeah, I saw that post, that's why I was looking up CA16DE stuff, but the pics I found of the Pulsars were not all that great, so I couldn't tell where it was... Most of the junkyards around here won't let you go through them, kinda sucks, but in a way it's good, cause I'd be there all the time... :laugh:

Well OK

if this means anything *lol*

Autozone has a listing for a cap and rotor kit for an 88 Pulsar with the 1.6, but when you select the 1.8 it says "Not Needed"

So I'm assuming that they're likely right, and the 1.6 does indeed as I saw at the wreckers, have a dizzy.

Now, depending on the orientation of the motor and IIRC ...

the dizzy was towards the driver's side of the block (L-R) pointing to the driver's side.

In my mind, this will put the distributor pointing right at the firewall ... dunno if there would be enough room.

hmmmmm... Well I guess that's good news and bad news... :rofl:

I'm gonna search for some more CA16 pics and see what I can come up with. And maybe, just maybe, if it works, then Nissan was kind enough to leave the casting for the dizzy in the CA18DE head. In other words, with the CA16 cams and dist., we could use the CA18DE head. Off to yahoo...

Well, I joined the nissanexa.com board to try and do a little more DE head poking around, and they pretty much said that NO DE heads came with a distributor, one guy said it could have been the Jap spec CA16DE, which has an external coil. I don't know, cause I didn't see it, but I'm not taking what these guys say to be the absolute truth either...

And of course, there's a few guys badmouthing the CA18E's and CA20E's:

unfortunately those two engines the CA20E and CA18ET are really really weak engines! I've seen two or three ETs in engine conversion that have shortly after thrown a rod out the block.

Obviously he didn't read my post, which explained the build up. Then there was another who said:

don't know much about hondas but I assume CRVtec are high compression pistons like 10.5:1 otherwise you wouldn't have bothered rebuilding your motor. I assume your engine currently pings its head off no matter what fuel you put in.

:wall: :wall: :roll:

I don't know what it is about people only reading PART of the post. Well anyway, might still get some decent info out of em anyway. Here's the thread: http://forum.nissanexa.com/showthread.php?t=15403

Some people you just want to punch in the side of the head...that devil character on the other forum would be one of them!!!

Hmm ... now, I'm pretty sure I was looking at a ca16de ...

The only straw I'm clinging to now, is that I think most of the EXA members are AUS ... and we know there's a pretty big discrepancy between which motors came where.

Crap ... guess I should go back to that wreckers *lol*

They said some of the Pulsars also came with a GA16 (like the Sentra motor), but that's pretty easy to tell the difference on that...

so what ever happened to this CA20DE????

As for my project its slowly on the way now for the bulshiting part
Why would i lie about somethign stupid
First of this site has helped me alot w this car and second i have put a lot of imput in here
3)I knwo my shit about cars adn i dont bulshit

As for wat this thread started of earlier yes the head bolted right on the motor was not started because nothing was hooked up
I cant tek pics because i dont have a camera
NOw is u go to www.msdignition.com (http://www.msdignition.com/) u can find a cheap ignition box which wires up to your old coiul wires.
Then you hook up a singe distributor with 4 spark plug plugs adn you wire that up.
NOw there is ur solved prob.
But as i can say this is somethign i have not done just been discussed w teh machanics at my shop.
All of the tech there think that it migth work .

Now if you all still wanna bulshit and fuking gag your self fine.

NOw as for me beating the CRX (to clear up a point) it was w\ my CA20E fixed up not w the new head.

Well sorry if you all thought this was a lie but as i see it all new great things are a work of art in progress.

Thank You

ok asshole u wann bad me well w/e this thread is so old .
that is the kind of stuff that will get you banned, and we are all a civil bunch of guys here and thats the kind of stuff that wont be tolerated!

i never said anything bout you being banned and i also wasnt trying to talk shit about you!

i was just trying to see if there was ever an update on the progress of this!

also.. why you getting so defensive?

you just need to calm your ass down!

whats with the starting of WW3?? I think the main thing is that there are so many un answered questions that some of us are just very curious as to how this damn thing works. The use of foul language is not going to get you anywhere (except banned, like henge said). Because of all the discrepencies, I (as well as amny others I am sure) would like to see some pictures of how this is going together. I do not believe it is too much to ask...

Yes i agree and u can never tell how somnody is talking when your are talking or chating on teh net.
NOw if u read my last post i said the reason there is no pics is because i dont own a CAMERA. NOw how can i show u guys the pics w out on. Yes i know i can go buy a disposable camera but then again i dont have a scaner adn my cd player on my comp dosent reed burned cds too well. So after any of this chages i will get some pics untill ten i guss i will just post on the project.

There's a guy on the nissanexa.com board who did one in his Pulsar. CA20 block with a CA18DE head. He also had the electronics from the CA18. As far as I can tell, that's the only way to do it. The CA18DE's run off of coil packs, there's no place for a distributor, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to rig one up on there. So CA18DE electronics will be a requirement.

Also, you need either a custom built crank pulley or a spacer machined to fit the CA18DE crank pully. The CA18DE crankshaft has a larger snout. You also will need a longer timing belt to accomodate for the taller CA20 block.

Lastly, you will need to drill an extra hole or two for the CA18DE tensioner.

So it's definetly doable, but I don't think with CA18ET or CA20E electronics.

Also I think there was an issue with the head bolt size, but I can't remember...

But it has been done, and has run in a pulsar. The guy sheared off one of the keyways in the crank and bent some valves last I heard...

noo the thread has started again.....the MSD ignition system wont work as stated by joel there is NO place for a distributor on a de head so yes the de electrics is the only was, joels right the thread size and spacing is different like metric to imperial and you say you didnt say that you beat a CrX with this head on your first post suggest otherwise....

OK well this is where it sgonna end i guess the way i wrote the 1st thread up was not done right since i did it really fast as i remember.

To size it up a bit wat i meant to get across waas that if i had a camera i would take some pictures and if it works out i hope i can beat the crx and trip 3rd gear.

THats how that thread was suppose to start. So since this thread is not goin anywhere but and argument Can sombody del. it and once iv advanced on my project i will post again

Thank You

the only person that i have seen starting an argument was you.. the only reason i brought this post back, was because i too have a CA20E S12 and want to find something to do with it

so i was just curious as to see if any progress on this project as been made

Glad you cleared that up, theres no reason for the thread to be deleted as you can post your updates in here, no-one is trying to start an arguement but if something is posted thats in black & white and is then denied i think a question can be asked right???

dont worry about it just do what you have to do to make it work and do a nice write up :)
im sure when your finished a member that is near you with a digicam would be more than happy to help
but if your still serious of going this route use the ca18de electrics its easier than any other way.

right i agree so i will use this post to update and mabey by the time i am done w\ everything i migt have a camera. So from there we migt have a new designe.
I will keep post of project