i recently bought a 95 neon dohc with a blown headgasket. im planning on fixing the car and keeping it formyself, but i know its going to need some more *** to it. i figured while i had the head off i was going to port and polish and replace the cams with performance cams. anyone have any suggestions? not just something they have heard of but something that has been tried and proven to work.

thanx

 

crane cams

 

Yup. Crane 16's, or if you bump up the compression, Crane 18's.

I'm running a set of Crane 24's in my race car.

 

cool thanx. ill look into those. any idea on how much the head can be shaved?

 

I wouldn't do no more than .030" But people have taken as much as .040", IIRC.

 

I ran .040 on mine for over a year without any problems

 

Yea, the reason I say I wouldn't do more than .030" is if the engine ever needs rebuilt in the future and the head needs resurfacing, it still has plenty of meat left to do that. At .040" if the head needs more than the most minor resurfacing, you're pushing it.

 

Shaving the head changes cam timing as well. Not that big of a deal if you are going to put aftermarket cam gears on with the new cams and head to the dyno. Safer to deck the block. Safer still to just pop the pistons out while the head is off and put in higher compression pistons and new rods. You can also remove a layer from the head gasket. Don't recall the thicknesses on those, but it'll bump compression a tad and still be reliable enough with just one layer missing.

Best of luck!