Twin Cam Head Repair

[Mr.Gale]

Cross Posted


I have a question I would like to ask but before I do, I should introduce
myself. My first Lotus was a '67 Lotus Cortina that I bought around 1969. What a
horrible car! I drove it a couple of years then spent a lot rebuilding the
motor. Not long after I got the rebuilt engine back in the car I started having
all sorts of problems with everything but the engine. I couldn't take it anymore
but I didn't want to give up my fresh motor so I bought a '64 ?lan, swapped the
motors and sold the Cortina (Ya!). The ?lan was my every day, go to work car for
many years until my, not so new motor, developed a knock (I think it's a small
end bushing?) and rather than rebuild the motor again I bought a Vegentune motor
in 1983 and had it shipped over from England (I'm in CA).
My ?lan has been sitting along the side of my house for the past ~15 years and
only recently decided to get the car back on the road, I'm getting old so if I
don't do it now, I probably never will. It is now in my garage which is a major
step in the right direction. I still have my old engine and I was thinking at
some point might even rebuild it. This kind of brings me to my question; during
the time the engine was running I stripped out a spark plug, I removed the head
and took it to a machine shop and had helicoils (sp) put in all the spark plug
holes. The one thing I noticed when I had the head off was there is corrosion
from the water that had eaten close to the one of the combustion chambers, THE
QUESTION, can this be fixed? I would hate to scrap the head, I bought it from a
well known Lotus enthusiast in Tennessee (~1970); I wish I could remember his
name but he claimed it is a Cosworth Mk XIII head. It looks nice, ported and
polished and fitted with CPL2 cams and ran very strong.
If it can be fixed, does anyone know of someone the San Francisco Bay Area that
could work on it?
Thanks for any help or advice,

Mr.Gale

[m750rider]

Check with Ken Gray at Dave Bean Engineering. He does mostly street but there are other folks more race oriented. He is a good one to start with. They can probably give you some advice.

[email protected] (209) 754-5802

They have a small machine shop and also know where to get work done properly. They sell parts for/work on street and race motors.

[Frank Howard]

he claimed it is a Cosworth Mk IIIX head.

Exactly what number is IIIX?

[john.p.clegg]

Ten minus three equals seven,same as VII ?

John

[Mr.Gale]

Oops! Got that back backwards, try XIII.

[r.agnew]

You probably know of their existence already, you may even be a member, but if you don't you should contact Golden Gate Lotus Club <<http://www.gglotus.org/>>, (just google GGLotus). They seem to have a good website and I'm sure there's someone there who can point you in the right direction.

Rob
'71 Sprint

[khamai]

For NorCal TC head repair -
aforementioned Ken at DBE
Barry Spencer http://www.spencersmotorsports.com

Cheers,
Kiyoshi
GGLC Webguy

P.S. Please consider joining the GGLC!

[Mr.Gale]

Thanks for all the help! I'm glad I asked as I was ready to throw the whole engine in the recycling bin.

Mr.Gale
P.S. I am a member of the GGLC.