>>>*Morning!

*I just spotted this thread. Le' and I are getting ready to wander off for a short few days of sanity recovery, so I thought I would chime in.

I have been looking at the 3VZE, and the more I look the more I wonder why?

The design is odd, the airflow is inefficient, the engine is heavy and hard to get to to even work on. I was looking for a reason for it burning valves from time to time on #5 & #6, and my heat gun showed some spooky looking exhaust gas temps. Every time we see the exhaust manifolds they are warped beyong belief.

Restrictions. No doubt. So looking at the heads, they are easy to free up. I realized instantly that the engine needed a bit larger valves, so I went and had some made. That turned out to be cheaper and better than buying stock ones.

All one needs to do is pull an exhaust valve out and look at the seat and port. What were they thinking? I looks like they cast the head, then decided to use a smaller valve afterwards. My best guess was they built the engine, then realized it had more RPM potential than they wanted, so they took the easy route to choke the thing off..it couldn't have been for improved mileage, that doesn't work. Efficency is what improves mileage.

For a long time we were seeing these mostly for head gasket/valve problems (heat, not the gaskets...), now we are starting to see the engine more and more as they get older in the fleet. Rebuild kit prices plummeted this last year so that helps, suddenly it is in a typical budget to rebuild one.

So far, larger valves combined with port changes and a better exhaust seems to add a nice 30-35 H/P easily. The short block just needs to be snug. Adding a cam is a can of worms, the upper end valve train dictates lots of changes. I even thought of having the valves made .030" longer to leave room to regrind and add lift/duration but it hit me quickly that this would restrict the cam choice to fit the valve.

Besides, the factory got very close to correct on the stock cam design for what my opinion is worth, when the goal is to just drive. I do see that some folks are offering cam setups, way ahead of me there. Fine if in the budget but the amount of work didn't look worth it to me. I will bet that soon some suppliers will be offering new stock base circle cams for these.

So like all engines, she responds to airflow. Free up the intake and exhaust, bit of port and valve improvement, and I see a nice 20% plus gain in there.

So far Tod has only done a half dozen or so but it seems to work real nice, I agree with Tim over at DOA. There is 20-30 easy ponies in there, much more gets you reaching deep in the jeans for the hardearned......*EB