CR head work

Is anyone commercially doing flow work on the CBEA-CJAA heads?

Ryan (Darkside) and MarkoP (npsheads).

I emailed Franko6 and he didn't seem interested. Would like to know how it works out. Would be very interested in before and after pictures.

I asked Frank06 awhile ago, he said he doubts if there will be enough CRs left to work on.

Got a guy doing nice porting jobs in Bucharest for 350/4 cylinder heads, very nice results 370-400hp on diesel alone from 1.9 and 2.0 tdi.
Shipping i think is little bit expensive for heavy heads unfortunatelly.
Also in Italy i know 2 guys doing top jobs, iirc 150€/cylinder, strongest car is 2.0PD@ 425hp on diesel alone.
Ruben also has a solution in Belgium probably.
If shipping cost is not a problem..there are solutions for everybody.

Is that the cost 350€

Here is why I don't mess with the CR engines very much...

One of my customers decsribed the CR cylinder head as 'dainty'. That's how you want to describe your Diesel engine..Dainty.

The issues we have seen after attempts at big power... The rocker/ roller and contact point to the valve stems is weak. The fulcrum point for the rocker roller would have to be redesigned in order to make use of a taller rise cam. The roller needle bearings flatten out under extreme load, particularly on the exhaust side.

One recent CBEA cylinder head we reworked, almost all of the components for the exhaust side were trashed in an engine supposedly modded to 250 hp and sold with 6,000 km on it. None of the exhaust valves were turning because the rocker had extreme wear marks in the valve contact end. The designed method for the turning the valves was worn off of the rocker. Most of the rollers were not spinning and almost all of the hydraulic plungers were locked hard in place.

All this happened very rapidly to the engine. I think there are better platforms for big builds than the VW CR. This engine and a couple of other CR engines have given me little faith in the longevity for building the CR for large power. I am sure there are those who will dispute my findings.

We were considering a cam design, but the complications and overcoming the multiple issues along with the continuing uncertainty for the future of American common rail engines caused us to cease engineering efforts.

Porting is quite the problem. As the engine is, the porting is down right ugly. The complication is that any increase in flow volume has a trouble with upsetting the forced swirl built into the port design. The intake ports vary in size to impell the swirl. Without a very complicated setup that would demonstrate proper swirl chamber effect, the only thing one could do is a wild guess.

Since we are busy enough with other projects, we will leave this one to those with more confidence for success.

So Frank, are the CR engines in Europe are built better or are they just not concerned like you?

At 170k when i did my head and block i had no such issues, everything was quite fine.
Doing the head properly takes time as there is not good access from intake side, but in the end a nice job was done. I was not very concerned with swirl tbh, car goes strong and fuel consumption is better than before the tuning and modifying everything.

Maybe good atomization of the fuel and good burning at high pressures is more important than swirl, maybe im just wrong.

Thanks for elaborating Frank.

Does anyone know if there is a better compatible CR head that could be ported and built to work well on a CJAA?

Even a basic porting job, removing all the obstructions under the valve seats will bring good improvements i think.
I would go for the oval port cyl heads to start with.

Which engine have the oval ports?

The lifters in these certainly are made to a price. We have ran them hard for a long time and no failures and we dont install brand new.

When our fuel pump siezed and the Timing belt snapped all 8 rockers smashed but the valves were fine and that same engine is still in the Arosa now.

We are testing aggressive cams so only time will tell if they are actually as weak as Frank suggests but up to now i'll disagree. This is why we do the testing, sometimes it turns destructive and we need to upgrade the parts!

A lot of swirl can be maintained even with a big port job but these only need a small amount of work for a huge increase in power potential, we went from being stuck at 250hp to 420hp.

Later cars got the oval ports, CKRA in USA were the first AFAIK, The complete engine is different, the head alone cannot just be swapped. Doing a swap would not be hard to be honest, all the electronics are the same so fo big builds it makes sense to go that route.

I havent seen failed rollers in anything except timing failures. And increased lift can easily be done to a point. That point is easily defined. The porting is tedious, but beneficial. There is not nearly as much need for swirl as one might think...and even if one ports the dickens out of one of these...they will still swirl. There are several better heads than the CJAA...however, these are what we have the most of, thus why not mod those. These engines can make so much more power and with less breakage than the old ones....so why not move forward with them?

That is my point all along. A stronger engine with HP potential without spending a small fortune. I have send people on here spending thousands and thousands of dollars on ALH and PD engines to get 250-300 HP. And after that how long will it last?

Find someone who ports these and just do it. Marko is excellent. Since he's in Europe maybe he'll sell you an oval port one without a core, or just give you a reduced core refund. Tdisyncro's race engine build was based on a CBEA and got awesome flow numbers, albeit with serious work and the biggest valves that would fit in the bore, but as has been noted, it's the ports, not valve curtain area that's a limiting factor and in any case, stock for stock even the round port 16V heads flow much better than any 8V TDI one.

Are you using any ported heads? How to contact Marko?

Send an email and pray he answers