My original plan was to put an ND2 engine in my car, but that changed when I saw that there are tuners in Germany that mated an ND2 head onto an ND1 block, using the ND1 pistons. According to them you get the benefit of the higher RPM range power, but better low/mid-range. Everything I’ve read said it could not be done, but they seem to have done it. I’m going to dive deeper into this. I think they use the ND2 head, but ND1 cams that have slightly less lift to make everything happy but I’m not 100% sure right now. I’m not even sure if the cams have different lift, this is all based on Google Translate.
What I am 100% sure of is, I am going to go down this route. In fact, I already have the ND2 head on the way. A bit of an impulse buy, I admit. I got the head for $100. I could not pass up that deal, but there is a catch to it. The head came from a flood car that ingested water into cylinder 4. The head will need to be completely stripped down, cleaned and rebuilt.
Here are the images of it.
All images courtesy of Link Motorsport on eBay.
It’s going to be a project, but either this or an ND2 swap was going to be my next big project anyway over the winter so for $100 I could not say no. It is going to take some work and money, but I was going to strip, clean and rebuild whatever ND2 head I ended up getting anyway. I’m happy to start with one that was $500-$600 cheaper than the least expensive used ones I’ve seen.
I’ll update progress on this as I go, but this is going to be a slow burn. It’s a long term project so don’t expect weekly updates with this thing up and running in a month or so. My goal is for it to be on the car, tuned and running by next year’s Miata’s at the Gap event so I have a year to get it done. That should be plenty as I plan to do most of the work myself. Should be easy….right?
Supergoat Garage 