Mine took about 5 mins on the polishing wheel.

Yeah banjo only no locating dowel. I'll get a pic when I get back from picking widemr updeom airport. The squirter outreach is also slightly shorter meaning you can mount it slightly closer to bore. At this stage dummying them up in a 3s block should clear the counterweights aol. It's actually pretty difficult to find a workable solution given all the things they must clear.

Yes, it does make a mess.
 
Does this mean my block may be the test dummy for the squirters 

Not much going on with the MR2, apart from collecting dust.  Its still sitting on the hoist.  A year on and I am still waiting for my turbo to come.  Heads still at the shop (they have made a start though, I should go and see them on monday and give them a bit of a poke along.  I still need a finished head CC to order my pistons).  Received news that the billet cranks will be good to go in 3 weeks or so so might start trying to get my motor together.  Turbo currently has no ETA.  I am very close to plain cancelling my order and getting something else.  I made full payment on this turbo 12 months ago and to this date the manufacturer hasn't been able to deliver the goods.
 
In the mean time I've found myself another hobby to keep myself occupied.  Provides alot better value for money in the way of entertainment and fun as well.  Karting.
 

Yes, I get to wear a gay P plate.  This is a requirement for your first 3 races and you've got to start from the back of the grid.
 
Started building my own kart trailer as well, however, lack of time means I haven't got too much done thus far.

 

Yeah still waiting.  Yeah, I am sticking with the caldina head.  I entertained the idea of a vvti head and did a fair bit of research.  End of the day benefits weren't worth the cost involved.  I actually got as far as rocking up at an import wreckers with cash.  He wasn't willing to budge a couple of hundred bucks so I walked out.
 
I already have all the parts, including custom valves, for the caldina head.  This **** is expensive and is completely useless if I had of decided to use a VVTI head. 
 
vvti enabled cams in a profile anywhere near what I wanted are non-existent, at least if you aren't happy to use welded cams.  I also have over $1000 in a inlet manifold for the caldina which would be useless.  Exhaust manifold is yet to be fabricated though I think.
 
I don't know, I still like the idea of it, but I intend to build the caldina head either way as it will be very much easier to sell it as a built unit.  My cylinder head engineering friends also sort of warded me away from using a VVTI head as they've seen a few valve train failures for seemingly no particular reason in some race engines.
 
What sort of head did you end up picking up?  I am still keen to give it a go, just because I like to experiment with new things, however, it'd be a super expensive build as I'd want all the fruit including custom valves etc.   With the amount of enjoyment (or lack thereof) I've garnered from the MR2 in the last 4 years, I doubt I could justify it.    Right now Karting gives me a bit of a motorsport fix.  Eventually I may end up with a formula ford or formula vee or may end up with a radical or something similar.  The MR2 I guess will be a bit of a street/strip monster and thats about it.  If I ever get around to sorting it out.  The Evo makes a nice comfy daily drive and has a reasonable amount of stick.  If I equip it to run E85 I think it'd be a sweet street car without running into any sort of legal or police attention.
 
The kart is a watercooled 125cc Rotax.
 

just_ace

damn, i want your shed. good to see your still alive.

waiting on the borgwarner turbo still? noticed BC list 5s billet stroker kits on their site now. hope you ended up getting a good deal. still going to have surplus to requirements for sale at your leisure?

so you've stuck with the caldina head? i've gone down the vvti route, wish me luck, i'm gonna need it.

what cc are those carts?

vvti has it merits.  It'd be great if TRD still did their VVTI cams, however, they don't.  Using a nice duration cam without the negative side effects on a forced induction motor would be wicked.   I don't know how much benefit you'll get if you are going to be running seq turbos anyway.  With a big single I would suspect you could see increases in spool of 500rpm or a little more, which is nothing to laugh about.  Obviously this is with the vvti dialed in correctly which could prove for ALOT of tuning time on the dyno.
 
I am quite confident I could get a beams head to work on a 5s bottom end with an external VVTI oiling mod.  Ferrea could do me a custom valve set and I think I found some springs and retainers that would probably work (based off installed height and preferable seat pressure).
 
 

Yeah, well, I guess we are both after different things at the end of the day.   The CP's probably wont be useable, the valve angles and positions are different and the combustion chamber CC is much less. 
 
That pipe isn't an oil feed, I think it may be a drain from the back of the head.  The oil feed for the VVTI is an extra gallery in the beams block.
 
IMHO, I think the real benefit in VVTI is being able to run a wilder cam then normal.  The valve open duration will be limited by the cam duration so running a smaller cam you are sort of cutting yourself short by not having the larger duration you'd want at high RPM whilst still being able to minimize overlap at low RPMs (particularly important on a turbo).  The lift is much higher, yes, I am running 11.8mm lift in my head and the vvti heads easily have another mm over this.

Yeah hit me up.  There is valve to valve and valve to piston contact you have to worry about.  Normally you need to measure these clearances using putty with the head on.  I am not 100% certain of the stock mapping but I would think it could make use of near on full advance and retard allowable by the VVTI mechanism.  As you get larger and larger cams you need to start limiting the vvti movement, which needs to be done not only electrically (through the map in the ecu) but also mechanically to absolutely ensure no contact will occur, obviously if you got deeper reliefs then factory you may be able to look at running larger advance or retard valve to valve contact allowing. 
 
With an ecu with cam control you can control the cams however you want within the stock range.  You are correct that you can tune the vvti for required overlap at high RPM, thing is, your still limited to the shorter duration.
 
I believe Toda at least make a vvti enabled cam still in the 264/268 range.  If you have a look at all the mivec evo's you'll notice that they run much more aggressive durations then an 3sgte.  >280 is quite common.  I believe the ability to run this large a cam has alot to do with the variable cam control.