Burton

Well, lots of people don't even know what Starion or Conquest is, so there's no way they'd know that starquest is a combination of the 2. I use SQ around people in the know, and Starion or Conquest around those who don't know the cars. I don't use the starquest term much, but I don't dislike it either.... There was also a Starquest video game that was really popular 10 years ago or so... Back then when I used the starquest term for our cars, people who didn't know the cars thought I was talking about the video game.

I think Niko has something set up like that for the TX meet... $200 per person for the whole day... I think that includes instruction and such.

I wanna say maybe spring/summer of 2010? It wasn't too long after I did the car in 09. Those guys like SQs... mine was the first of 5 or 6 they did articles about.

Ahhhh, I never used them myself but knew they used to take engines, and trannies and such. I wanted to use them back in the day, but then found out that MI wouldn't allow Greyhound to operate shipping in the state. Not sure why, but couldn't do it in MI, and haven't needed to ship anything big since being in TX.

Not sure if they still do it, but Greyhound used to send stuff like that for really cheap compared to freight. Drop off and pick up at the local terminals.

Congrats! I agree the time goes fast. Our daughter is 17 months now and our son will be here in about 9 weeks.

Well, if everyone was as perfect as you, there wouldn't have been an issue. Unfortunately Most of the world isn't. Were you born in AZ? If not, did you move there from a cold climate? If you did, I assume you had desert tires, food and water before you left or hit the desert, or did you just learn that you needed to have that stuff after getting there and realizing it for yourself or hearing from locals? People who live in the south, know to be prepared for getting stranded in the desert because of experience. People up north know to bring coats, gloves, a shovel and kitty litter when they travel in the winter because of experience. Even backwoods skiers are prepared because they learned from experience or did some research before they tried a new hobby. All of those are people who have the experience needed to know how to prepare. How can someone who never experiences something or researches it, know what to do when it happens? Unless you think that everyone should go on the internet and research everything they have no experience of? I ain't got that kind of time. I suspect people in ATL didn't have the time to research winter driving. They had kids to take to school and work to go to. Probably a lot of... "I have to go out and it's going to be slick. I'll just take my time and go slow. How bad can it be? people up North do it all the time". You are right about one thing tho... it's all about being prepared. In this case, the DOT, schools, businesses and especially the drivers weren't prepared. It would be awesome if they were all perfectly prepared for anything, just like you, but like I said, most of the world isn't.

So you'd just leave your kid abandoned at school or risk losing your job by not going? Good for you, but not everybody is willing to do that. You are also making that decision based on years of winter driving up north. A lot of the people trying to do it in the south have zero experience, but think it can't be that hard because the Northerners do it all the time. I thought like you when I lived up north. Now that I live down south too, I don't. You'd probably feel different about it if you lived both places.

I was definitely glad to see the Seahawks win, but I was disappointed in the game itself. I expected 2 Super Bowl caliber teams, but only one showed up. By the end, I was actually embarrassed for the Broncos and was secretly rooting for them to score a couple TD's to make things closer and more exciting LOL.

Not sure how that stuff has to be on heads, but on injection molds that needed internal cooling, we'd just drill holes straight thru the billet, drill cross passages where needed and then plug the holes on the outside of the billet. You can set the job up on different angles to get whatever angle you need for the passages. It could even be milled out instead of drilled. A 5 axis mill could put multiple lines in at multiple angles on just one job setup.

Gonna be pushin 80 here tomorrow, then back into the 40's for Sunday and Monday.

Yeah, I'm guessing most of the people down south stuck on the roads were going to and from work, not running to 7-11 for a Slurpee. All our TV stations were telling people to stay home, but my wife's job was not saying the same thing. She went to work, and even with more than 10 years winter driving experience in MI and brand new all season tires on her FWD Sorento, her 35 minute commute turned into 3 hours and 10 minutes. There were accidents on the interstate every 1/4 mile, and accidents at about every exit, most of which kept cars from leaving or entering the interstate.

Well, like I said, do it and show us all. Talk is cheap. Lots of keyboard mechanics out there willing to tell everyone how they're doing it wrong, but never willing to do anything but talk about it. I don't know enough about mechanics to know what he did or should have done better, even if I did, it's not my place. As a car builder and former CNC machinist and mold maker, I say he's doing it right and kudos to him for even trying anything like this. We should be saying "Hey, good job! getting something like that made takes a lot of work and passion!", not trashing what the guy did. That's why vendors bail on this community. They either get criticized until they leave or they realize you guys want champagne parts on beer money, and know it can't be profitable.

Or do whatever you like to your car. Kudos to you for making something yourself. That's better than 75% of the people in the car world who wouldn't even attempt it. I have some diamond plate engine compartment covers I made for my old 89 TSI many years ago. I just found them again when I was digging around in my parts a few weeks back. I was just gonna hang onto them in case I ever wanted to use them again, but that is doubtful, so I might sell them if you're interested.

Yes, equipment is huge. If you have the best winter tires and do evrything right you'll be in way better shape than the next guy. The people down south don't have that stuff, or at least don't get that stuff. I wpuldn't either... why spend the money for all that winter gear that you will use 5-10 days over the next 10 years. That said. The greatest equipment in the world will not make any unexperienced person a good winter driver.

OK, I see what you're saying now... and really we're on the same page. You're saying take all the stuff that has proven to work on stock heads, and incorporate those changes into this one off head... I guess I just assumed that is what he did... I mean, he has performance gains, and has improved the unit as a whole compared to stock, so I assumed those gains were from making those known reliable changes for performance. I thought you were saying to add the biggest of everything all at once in the initial design, even if those bigger mods hadn't been done before. Here's how I see it... He made a head that can use stock components to keep the cost bearable, but went bigger where he could to get proven performance gains. If these work, maybe he'll go a little bigger and try some stuff that hasn't been proven yet. What I was trying to get at was that from a manufacturing or machining aspect, you never "go big" and create something that hasn't been proven to work. You start with what does work and improve from there. That said, you never make wholesale improvements.. you change one thing at a time. If you change a bunch of stuff at once and the outcome doesn't work, you don't know what change caused your problem. The other thing to consider: Say one dude does a killer valve job on his car and gets a 10% gain... another dude does some crazy port work on his head and gets a 10% gain. Those are two great proven gains, but haven't been proven TOGETHER. In theory, someone would look at that and say if I put both of those proven gains in my one-off head, then I will get a 20% gain. Well, theory rarely works when it comes to designing and proving nods for cars. Maybe the mods together gets a 20% gain, maybe it's only a 10-15% gain. Worse yet, what if those two mods don't work and play well with others and together they only give you a 5% gain? What if together they don't work at all? What I was trying to get at was if someone went that route, dropped a bunch of money on aluminum and a lot more on CAD/R&D/machining if they didn't have the resources to do that stuff for free, they'd be pretty pissed if the end result didn't work, even if in theory it should have.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/StarQuestClub/ You'll have to scroll down a bit, but that's the page.

I'm talking just the chunk of billet. Valves, cams, stuff like that can be swapped back and forth. I'm talking just raw material cost for the head itself. Even if he's not paying for CAD time or machine time, cutter inserts, wear and tear on the machine, etc... Would suck to drop that kind of coin into a piece of aluminum that was nothing more than a boat anchor, nevermind the valves, cams, machine time, etc... Might not be a grand, but it will at least be several hundred dollars for a quality piece of aluminum billet that size.

Southerners: don't let some smack talking by some Yankees get ya down. It's all just jealousy. I've spent 3/4 of my life in snowy climates, and it's simple... the north is prepared, and the south is not. Up north, they have all the good salting and snow removal equipment, and kids are even taught about winter driving in driver's ed. They get weeks of experience driving in it every year. It is a cold, miserable experience. Due to all the gray and cold people get depressed and wish they could eat a bullet as they anxiously await the arrival of spring in June. But, that's how it is when you live up north. What they don't tell you about is the first 2 weeks of winter driving when even people who've driven in dozens of winters, forget what to do when it gets slick out. The first couple weeks of slick driving and the deer rut are the two times of the year where body shops are overwhelmed. Down south it's different. There's no winter driving education, and there's no snow removal equipment. San Antonio has 4 salt trucks. It is a much larger town than Grand Rapids, MI where I'm from, yet last I knew GR had close to 400. Southerners rarely get to drive on this stuff, so of course they don't know how to do it. I bet if the southerners had 2 weeks every year to re-acquaint themselves to slick driving like the people up north, there'd be no issue. However, down here the big snow storms melt off in a couple of days. It's hard to get experience in winter driving when you only do it 2 days every 5 years or so. I've been in TX now for 6 winters, and we've had snow once 1/2 inch with ice underneath, and then last week which was just an ice storm... the ice was 3/4" thick on our Kia in places. Both events pretty much shut down the city. I10 and I 35 closed, but that was because they were covered in ice, and they didn't have enough salt trucks to get rid of the ice. Both days, by noon it was all melted and life returned to normal. The problem is, in the south, 9 times out of 10, ice is the problem, not snow. Ice was the problem up north too. Some snow is no biggie, but have a 1/4" layer of ice under that snow that the salt trucks haven't gotten yet, and there's cars all in the ditch. It's always ice down south... even when it snows. The snow melts a little when it hits then turns to ice. People in MI crash on ice with EXPERIENCE driving in the winter... What do you think will happen when people who don't know how to drive in it have to? I think it all comes from jealousy... I know when I was in MI, and the south got hit, I'd smack talk my friends about it, mostly because it was the only time I could mock them for their weather, since it's gorgeous the rest of the year.

I did it before it went down, because knowing PQ, I knew they'd get pulled one day. Have there been any additions made to it recently? Like in the past 3 years or so? Wondering if I need to go save a more updated version.

Well, get access to a machine and show us all! I'm only going by what I learned in 13 years in the tool and die trade... Unless you've got unending money to spend on the R&D, and KNOW it will work from lots of computer driven tests and such, it's risky business. What if you design something that is extreme in all areas, but you put it on, and it doesn't work? Now you got a $1000 boat anchor, and no idea which extreme aspect is causing the problems So you go less extreme in an area, or maybe even more than one area. Maybe it works, but not well, so you gotta make another one. You might end up with 2 or 3 boat anchors before you get something that works. You only want to change one aspect at a time. If you change everything all at once, and it doesn't work, you'll never know what part of your changes were the cause. Instead, you improve on one aspect, and if that works well, awesome, work on the next aspect. If it doesn't work, you know that aspect has issues, so you either work on that aspect more to make it work, or see if you can get gains by changing another aspect. Meanwhile, this guy has some heads that work, right off the get go. They are an improvement over stock, so they aren't boat anchors. After some testing on these, he'll probably make some more with a more aggressive build... make something a little better for the next one, then something a little better on the next one... and keep doing that til you find the point where bigger is too big, and the heads don't work so great. At that point he'd have one worthless chunk of aluminum and lots of knowledge about what works best... Not to mention a string of heads that work They all have varying degrees of performance, but all are batter than stock, and all would hold worth for resale. When building stuff like this you always work towards the performance you want with units that work rather than work backwards from performance, making mistakes until you figure out what works. An engineer is someone who tells you how something "should" work. The machinist is the guy who takes that info and actually makes the part work. I spent 1/3 of my tool and die career doing engineering changes to fix the stuff that the CAD guys and engineers swore would work.

Boy, those heads must work then, if he's getting good numbers on RWD instead of AWD

Not from what I've seen. I'm not sure they're even really trying to sell many of them. It's been more the attitude of look what I made, let me know if you're interested and I might sell one. The 3 prototype heads have just been put on motors for testing, and that stuff takes more than a few days I'm sure. I think he's more concerned about making sure they work for his purpose rather than pricing or marketing for resale.

This is what I'm getting at. Someone makes something that 1% of the community would have the money or resources to do, yet 75% of the community are critics trying to say how they would do it better. Think you can make something cooler? Do it. Don't have the resources or knowledge into how parts like this are created? Then STFU. I can see if the part they made was junk, but from the sounds of it, the guy made a head that was stronger and good for just what he wanted. Better flow, no cracks, probably better resistance to warpage, yet in everyone else's eyes, he's doing it wrong. Who knows, there may be many other advantages to this head that will be realized during testing, but we won't know til they do all the testing. You guys are trashing someone who made something cool for their own cars... not even trying to sell any yet. No wonder most new vendors are run away from this community.

Well, I don't mess with car mechanicals much but as a former CNC machinist in the automotive tool and die trade, it sounds like he's doing it the smart way. I only know what I see about it on Facebook, but the guy claims it flows 30% better than a magna. There's 3 prototypes on cars being tested. It's much easier and cheaper to create a new part based on an old part. Dunno if the guy doing it is doing the CAD and machining himself, but I suspect so. Probably had a stock head that he CMM'd and started making whatever changes he wanted from there in CAD, then had it machined. Once he has something he knows that works and all the designs from that, he can try some more wild stuff. If you don't have something to "copy" that you know works, then from there it's just going by theory and your own engineering, and unless you're a master at designing heads, that a tricky prospect when you're talking about spending thousands of dollars to create something from scratch you "think" will work, only to find out it's useless because your theory and engineering were wrong. I hate to bring up bad topics, but I bet if a guy like this got a hold of one of the DOHC's it wouldn't have really been much harder to get one of those together. It's all a matter of having something you know works, and make inprovements from there.