Originally Posted by thisaznboi88

^ i wouldn't say the same, since Paul doesn't bench each port to match flow. But its good for the money.

I had a local machine shop do my head and they did an A+ job with the valve job, hot tank, and gasket matching everything.

Originally Posted by mzilvar

I'm sure he does a good job though from reading some of his threads looks like he has quite the shop in his garage and plenty of experience in these engines.

Just not feeling the price tag of king, not really any local shops I'd trust here in Hawaii.

Originally Posted by mzilvar

King wants a lot of money to port these heads, I got the 2500 quote from them as well and 2900 if they matched intake runners to the heads & IM gasket.

I got a much more reasonable quote of 600 + shipping from NVA-AV6 to have essentially the same work done by him. I know where I'll be sending them.

Originally Posted by thisaznboi88

i got mine for around 700 and this is their first v6 accord head. They mostly do muscle, but it was a full job (5 angle intake and exhuast, 2 angle back cut valves, PnP, gasket matching, PNP and gasket matched my runners, and Milling.) You will be surprise at the amount of time and quality a mom and pop shop that been around for 55+ years can do.

Only thing was missing was a bench flow, but I can live with that.

Also the reason it was considerably cheaper is that I dissembled the head myself, and put it all together myself. I had to buy a valve spring compressor and valve lapping tool. Also 200 dollars worth in new gasket and seal.

So I can see why King's charge as much as they do. Its a lot of labor

So if you are planning to do it have an extra 500 on the side for misc parts.

Originally Posted by Ilovemyvtx

And you won't have to wait 5 months to get something you payed for plus threatening legal action.

I'd go with a high end shop.

Originally Posted by mzilvar

I can definitely understand that perspective. The $2500 does include a competition valve job, which should be a 3 angle valve job.

I still think they overcharge, but that may be just my opinion, I can give an example though.

They wanted $400 to port match an old set of runners I have (I really don't need this though since I have P2R runners in the car). Whereas P2R was selling PNP runners for $380 and change that were brand new parts they purchased and did the PNP work to on their machines and lined up perfectly with my gaskets when I installed them.

$380 - $166 = $214 for the PNP job from P2R.

King = you provide runners and pay $400.

I suppose with their reputation they can charge more.

I might look around a little more, see if Abbott's Superflow will take them. Website shows around $1300 for..

Cylinder Heads, Fully Ported & Polished Intake & Exhaust, Unshroud Combustion Chambers around Intake and Exhaust Valve and Polish Combustion Chamber, and then we CC all Combustion Chambers for equal Combustion Chamber Volume. Includes Cleaning, Resurfacing and reassembling and a Competition 3 Angle Valve Job.

I'll see if they'll take these in, my heads landed on my doorstep today.

Originally Posted by mzilvar

I found a couple other shops, DPR racing and pure tuning.

Right now I'm leaning towards pure-tuning's spec c package for the heads, it's about $2k and includes the base and final bench flow tests, I'm already in contact with them. Also considering their spec b which is about $1k less, I could probably get them to add flow tests as well to the spec b. I'm thinking I'll probably be good with the spec b, I'm not going to run any crazy big cams.

Anyone have experience with either? Lol .. it is pretty expensive after all.. I'm considering sending the cams in to be re-ground now as well, nothing crazy I'm thinking bisi stage 1s so I can still hopefully get by emissions and stay on stock springs/retainers .. already contacted bisi with some questions as well about the valvetrain.

In the end I think my tab is going to run from $3k - $6k, depending on what I decide on and leave me with a set of complete heads and cams (my old ones) that I can sell. Still puts it right in the range of a S/C doing the install labor myself.

I'm hoping my gains might be similar, obviously not going to be though (no FP and no bump in CR), I still don't have a tuning solution though so I'll be on stock ECM and I'm coming from 35mm intake/30mm exhaust valves so the 36/30 in/exh and higher flow of the new heads are already a gain for me.

Originally Posted by i_love_cars

We've still got a ways to go on cams for the TL. They are out there, but there isn't enough R&D nor empirical data from a large pool of installed cams, whether regrinds or custom cut from blanks, to say one way or another what is best.

Originally Posted by thisaznboi88

how much did the regrind cost directly from web?

Originally Posted by mzilvar

looks like I read it wrong, maybe about 230 on the exhaust duration actually


lol, two of us looking at regrinds now

Originally Posted by kingkong_dav

Sick write up. Op y r u selling your s.

Originally Posted by Sonnick

I wonder how 260-270 duration cams would run on the J.........

Originally Posted by gerzand

my 297in/277ex @ .050 did very good. 325whp on the 11.5:1 effective CR (decked) j32a3 heads mentioned by the OP and 475whp when placed in j32a2 non decked (11:1CR) heads placed on a j35a8 stock shortblock on 9lbs of boost in my Rotrex C38-92 build with DTBs. Did excellent on boost.

Originally Posted by i_love_cars

Finally getting around to posting something here. Been busy.

Over most of the summer I was working with King Motorsports Unlimited on building the top end of my J35a8. The car is finally done and back on the road, runs perfectly, and has cost me one F'ing pretty penny.

High Level Overview:
The goal - port j35a8 heads, mill them for 12:1 compression, and run a Stage 3 cam regrind
The budget - $10k, the actual final cost: $13,378 (includes $1500 to replace the head I blew out prior to starting the project, and the 105k maintenance) - technically you could call it $16,578 if you include the $3200 i spent on Gerz's heads

Build sheet: Attachment 48154

Additional engine mods list for reference:
atlp v2 catback
rv6 v3 pcd
rv6 v3 jpipe
custom intake
3.7 mani/tb
Bisimoto valve springs/retainers

Storytime and charts:

This all started back in January 2013, when I talked with Gerzand about doing a build and he suggested I buy his decked/ported J32a3 heads, valves, and intake runners. The idea being I would mimic his build and ditch my j35 heads, aside from the cam profile. I agreed with the caveat that the heads were still in his car and I would need to wait until late May/early June to receive them. I agreed to that as well, fronted him $3200, and eventually May came and I received my heads. Joy of joys. I planned on getting to work shortly after that but was moving at the time.

Well wouldn't you know it, on June 14th, I was taking a trip to Chicago and blew the spark plug out of one of my stock j35 heads. This was the start of the actual build and was both a blessing and a curse.

I took the car to King, along with the new j32a3 heads that I got from Gerzand, and put them to work. I had them flow the j32 heads, and CC them - Gerzand's shop told him they made 13.5 compression with 60 thou milled off. Well it was pretty disappointing to say the least as his shop had only actually milled 20 thou, and the heads were only making 11.5:1 - the porting on them was good as it matched a Type-S head, at least.

So the decision was made to scrap Gerzand's heads, call the $3200 an exploratory loss along with whatever money I spent on flowbenching and CC'ing everything, and to then invest in my J35 heads. King used my blown head for testing purposes and ported out the easy stuff on a cylinder and flowed it. The cfm gains were solid as expected, so I dropped 1500 bucks on a brand new j35 cylinder head to replace the one I blew out, and decided to pursue the route of porting J35 heads and milling them for more realistic compression - the target was 12:1

Things turned out nicely when the heads were done being ported - here is the flow chart from that:
Attachment 48155

Milling the heads was on hold until we got some cam regrinds in our hands. This is where the project started to go awry and added another month to the timeline. Bypassing Bisimoto and going straight to the source of the regrinds, Webcams, we dicked around with some specs and settled on a Stage 3 for a TL they had done in the past. When the cams came back, they were degree'd and it was found that the valve timing was way off between front and rear cams. Centerline was perfect on the front, but the rear was off. Webcams comp'd us another set of cams, reground again with the same results.

The following are charts produced from measuring the lift every 10 degrees on a full rotation of the crank, for both cams. You can clearly see where the timing is off:
Attachment 48156
Attachment 48157

The problem here was that it was determined there is some goofy lobe separation from the factory TL cams, so when you regrind - the bigger you go on the cam, the more pronounced the separation. You'd probably never notice until you were on a dyno. The car would still fire up and idle ok, although we found a bug in Flashpro's live-tuning tables that caused the car to go on the fritz that at first we attributed to the cams.

There's a bit more to it but the process of measuring everything and proving out that Webcams' regrinds were causing valve timing issues, degree'ing stock cams and a couple sets of regrinds, blah blah blah ended up costing roughly $4k just in labor. I probably chewed through $6k on the cams alone which was absurd.

The conclusion is that you can regrind the TL cams and it will run, however, with a big enough regrind, you will lose a shitload of power down low and have some odd behavior above 6400 rpm. With the regrind by itself, I lost 40 wtq at 2k and by 3k it was leveling out. Up top, there was a solid digger from the cam position and valve timing being fucked.

The solution here was to make some custom cuts on the cam gears themselves, to physically reposition the cams. This fixed the valve timing so it was only off by a couple degrees which is not a big deal, and resolved ALL of my power loss issues. With the cam gears in place, I was able to retain all of my low end torque from when I had stock cams. The dyno chart line is almost identical as you will see.

So anyways, in the midst of this the heads were being milled, and we hit a limit of 40 thou on j35a8 heads because the center cylinders were at their piston-to-valve clearance limit by that point. It was still enough to make 12:1 compression exactly, which I was happy with.

These are some other interesting notes that show in the bottom right the CC results for the compression on my stock J35 heads, Gerzand's j32a3 heads, and finally my decked j35 heads:
Attachment 48158

There were so many nights at the shop and phone calls over the course of the summer that I can't remember it all now - it's just a blur.

The final result is a very well-built, well-tuned J35 motor - make no mistake, the car sounds wicked and runs strong for what it is. Is it worth the money? Not that much - I think if there wasn't as much R&D needed, a project like this would cost half as much. As it stands, I was forced to sink a LOT more cash into it than I really wanted to. I actually got so fed up with everything that I whimsically went out and bought my BMW 135 (which I had honestly wanted to pick up for years anyway).

That said, King was meticulous and everything was done right. I was able to be there for a lot of what was going on, and interact with them on a regular basis, which was a very good experience in engine building. You pay a premium, but the end result will be a properly running engine. People definitely need to understand that engine building is a precision process, not a slap-it-together and hope it works type of thing.

My advice to anyone looking to get fully built NA power on the TL would be this: Stop. Go the other direction. Just go with boost instead. I'm about 75 whp over stock with everything I have done. You aren't going to see more gains over stock than me on NA unless you get lucky with a miracle cam. At this point the only thing I'm missing is a 3" dump in the exhaust. Anybody can run dyno charts that pump higher numbers, but at the end of the day it's about the gains from stock to now. How much MORE power are you making over stock? It's very important to keep that perspective if you are considering going full NA. There's a SHITLOAD of hearsay on the forums and people spouting off about 350-375 whp with absolutely nothing to back it up and no context to what baseline whp was. Don't get caught up in that bullshit.

With a perfect cam, I believe you could get another 15-20 whp - but still you will basically hit a ceiling even in that scenario around +100 whp over stock.

I'm beating a dead horse here a bit but please, I'm trying to legitimately warn you if you are interested in building an NA TL, keep your expectations realistic. If not, you will be sorely disappointed.

Future plans for the car are most likely to continue weight reduction hopefully south of 3200 pounds, replace the clutch master cylinder and ETD, and keep the mileage off as best I can. It's not a DD anymore and my 135i has taken that role for summer, and I will most likely pick up a 335xi for the Wisconsin winters.

Final dyno chart:
Attachment 48159

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

What cams is the blue line

Originally Posted by 6spd-GERCO

See Reponse #7

The most recent dyno i had was from June 8th which is the line that is being compared in the dyno chart I posted above. That was 291/255 i think. Back in February I was at 295/258 or something - I'd give a +/- 5 margin of error on the dyno comparison here because the final line at 317/265 with cams/heads/tune was in August, and it was before my 4" intake. The car made 321 with the 4" intake mocked up, but we hadn't fabbed it yet for install in the car itself.

So, peak gains? Somewhere between 25-30 whp

While I would have liked to see +40 peak gains out of this project, I don't see any reason to pursue it further at this point. I'm pretty happy with how the car drives right now, not looking to get any more power out of it so I doubt I'll look at E85.

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

7 doesn't let me know what cams he was running before upgrading to the stsge3. Were they RL, type s or regular TL cams. Thanks

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

7 doesn't let me know what cams he was running before upgrading to the stsge3. Were they RL, type s or regular TL cams. Thanks

Originally Posted by mdnborg

3.5 heads so most likely Type S. Fun fact: RL cams and TL-S cams are the same. Same specs. Acura even acknowledges that they're interchangeable.

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

06-08 rl and type s share same cam 05 rl cam is different specs.

Originally Posted by mdnborg

All 05-08 RL cams are the same. 05 and only 05 has just has different part numbers.

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

Could be why they have different part numbers I cam analyzed both tls and 05 rl there were differences in the two.

Originally Posted by mdnborg

I seem to be finding lots of conflicting info. According to the RL service manual the cam specs should be the same between 05-08. However I've also been told that the 05 motor made less power than the 06-08, which is why only 06-08's are used for full motor swaps. But youre saying the specs are different, which could back up the fact that the 05 motors made less power. If you check Acura's parts catalogue they now list the 06-08 RL cams as being interchangeable with the TL-S cams, but not 05.

Really not sure what is correct anymore.

Originally Posted by mdnborg

I seem to be finding lots of conflicting info. According to the RL service manual the cam specs should be the same between 05-08. However I've also been told that the 05 motor made less power than the 06-08, which is why only 06-08's are used for full motor swaps. But youre saying the specs are different, which could back up the fact that the 05 motors made less power. If you check Acura's parts catalogue they now list the 06-08 RL cams as being interchangeable with the TL-S cams, but not 05.

Really not sure what is correct anymore.

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

Gotcha! I am from the dsm community. My eclipse makes 809whp, daily driven and I've been asked why are you fooling around with a Honda. Well I bought this car as another daily driver and got tired of these 370z owner's cockiness with my innocent Accord. So I decided to build it. I respect all of what has been in this community! I am working on trying to get some production billet cams for the j at the moment let see where it goes. I just got my custom cams back for the j I'll Dyno them here soon. I am glad to be here. Thanks. ILC great work. Let see what I can do with this plateform I do my own everything...

Originally Posted by Kelvin Williams

Gotcha! I am from the dsm community. My eclipse makes 809whp, daily driven and I've been asked why are you fooling around with a Honda. Well I bought this car as another daily driver and got tired of these 370z owner's cockiness with my innocent Accord. So I decided to build it. I respect all of what has been in this community! I am working on trying to get some production billet cams for the j at the moment let see where it goes. I just got my custom cams back for the j I'll Dyno them here soon. I am glad to be here. Thanks. ILC great work. Let see what I can do with this plateform I do my own everything...