Using Xu10 Mi16 Head On Xu9 Alloy Block

[SweetBadger 94]

As title, I'm after a new head for my MI, to increase the number of heads available just wondering how easy/feasible it is to use a 2l XU10 MI head.

 

I'm currently using standard 1.9 MI managment, inlet & exhaust manifold

 

As far as I can tell, it's just a case of:

 

1. Drilling & tapping 4 new holes for the top exhaust manifold studs

2. Blocking the oil drain for the vacuum pump

3. Drilling & tapping 1 new hole for the missing dizzy bolt hole.

4. Removing inlet manifold dowel

 

Is that it or am I missing something?

[welshpug 1,657]

you'd need a 1.9 MI16 inlet cam,

 

not sure about the manifold, a 2.0 manifold might fit in there on the shorter alloy block.

 

probably need more I don't know about.

 

swap the cam cover and the thermostat housing from the 1.9 head.

[Baz 421]

Pretty sure James_R ran this combination a few years back, as Wp said and ran a Maniflow manifold with both sets of holes to get round the exhaust issue, but again i don't see why you couldn't run the standard 2.0 Cast item, these seem to fit in most 205's without modification on an Xu10 so i don't see why they wouldn't with a touch less block height, although you may need to modify a downpipe to fit of course.

[SweetBadger 94]

WP - I'd be swapping the catcams 1.9 inlet cam from my current head so that's covered.

 

Baz - This would be to go in my running 1.9 MI - it has a fairly new reangled downpipe and qep manifold wedge plate so I'd be specifically looking to make the 2l head work with the stuff already on the car.

 

Plan is to get a decent head, recondition it and swap it in a weekend - just thought one option would be to pick up an XU10 head cheap if it's not that hard to mod for use with an XU9 setup.

[jackherer 543]

Pretty sure James_R ran this combination a few years back, as Wp said and ran a Maniflow manifold with both sets of holes to get round the exhaust issue, but again i don't see why you couldn't run the standard 2.0 Cast item, these seem to fit in most 205's without modification on an Xu10 so i don't see why they wouldn't with a touch less block height, although you may need to modify a downpipe to fit of course.

 

I took a maniflow off my mates S16 205 to weld it up and we put the cast one on temporarily to keep it on the road, it was rubbish, performance was severely affected, I think the cast manifolds are pretty restrictive.

[SweetBadger 94]

I took a maniflow off my mates S16 205 to weld it up and we put the cast one on temporarily to keep it on the road, it was rubbish, performance was severely affected, I think the cast manifolds are pretty restrictive.

 

Thanks for the heads up, suprising it made so much difference...

 

I would only be using a XU10 head if I can mod it to work with the standard XU9 exhaust manifold so it's a direct swap for the not so good XU9 head currently in my car.

 

I know I'd be better off just getting hold of an XU9 head but decent examples of these seem to be getting few and far between, hence the question about modding an XU10 head...

 

The way I see it is the castings are identical so to make the XU9 exhaust manifold fit drilling and tapping 4 new holes for the top exhaust studs should be a fairly trivial task, then it's just a case of swapping my 1.9 cams over & blocking the vacuum pump oil return.

[SPGTi 2]

Only briefly skimmed this, but couldn't you run the 306 GTi-6 exhaust manifold ? I would have thought this would have also offered a bit of a performance gain.

 

cheers

 

Steve

[SweetBadger 94]

Only briefly skimmed this, but couldn't you run the 306 GTi-6 exhaust manifold ? I would have thought this would have also offered a bit of a performance gain.

 

cheers

 

Steve

 

The exhaust ports don't line up between the GTi6 and MI heads so it's not an easy option to fit a GTi6 exhaust manifold - see the exhaust wedge plate on petert's site http://www.taylor-eng.com/conversion/conversion_parts.htm

 

But this would defeat the object of what I'm proposing anyway - modding a standard 2l MI XU10 head to work with 1.9 MI inlet manifold, exhaust manifold and managment.

[Veero 1]

A slight side question, would fitting the XU10 head improve the oil return to the sump that some XU9 heads seem to not do very well causing the oil surge on long left handers? If so it would seem like an easy way to combat the problem provided the exhaust issue is easily dealt with.

[dcc 855]

If you are talking about the 2ltr mi16 head, then I am not sure, I always thought that they had the same design just different port spacing/patterns. The XU10J4RS head however I think has better design all round and from what I read on here has better oil return and galleries.