Eddygee53

Hello everyone, hope everyone's having a good day! So today i have a question regarding aftermarket cams on a stock head. I purchased a k20a jdm low performance (not a type r, more like a k20a3 but stamp says k20a but i know its not a type r) and i have a buddy that has stage 2 brian crower cams for the k20a3 we built a couple years ago in highschool, he bought the valve springs but ran it with stock retainers and ive been thinking about throwing it in my car just for a bit more power.

My question is, so when we put the engine together, one of the retainers broke after roughly 10k miles and he dropped a valve and i was wondering if the high rpm caused that (9500 rpm rev limit) retainer to break or if the larger cams did. Like i said i know i wont get a huge gain out of the cams but i want to know what most likely went wrong and how to correct it because i would still enjoy the gains for my engine from just a drop in cam.

if retainers are the issue what retainer is recommended? This is my daily driver so if its just not with the gains i would rather not mess with it and leave the car as reliable and just save up for a k20a2/z3 but i would rather just make my current engine a bit more fun but ill take the best recommendation and go with that.

Thanks!

thisguyaves

probably a combination of both cam and speed. The cam likely had higher lift, compressing the spring more than usual and putting more pressure on the retainer, and the engine speed slamming it open didn't help either I imagine. Get titanium retainers, Ferrea makes a nice set, I trust their valvetrain components to the moon and back. Ferrea - Titanium Dual Valve Spring Retainer (K20) - OnlineTSM

JRCivic1

It is not recommended to mix/match brands when it comes to springs and retainers. If you get Ferrea Ti retainers as thisguyaves suggests, then get their springs as well. Ti retainers are lighter than stock steel retainers and thus allow the engine to rev to a higher RPM before valve float occurs. The downside to Ti retainers is their effective life: under extreme conditions, they shouldn't be run for more than 10K miles before replacing them. Steel retainers however, can be used for much longer... but cannot be revved as high safely. In either case, I doubt there was any effective reason to rev your A3 engine to 9500 rpm with BC stage 2 cams... it wouldn't make power that high.

So, if you have a set of BC springs... order a set of BC STEEL retainers and tune the car... rev it to about 8000 to 8500 and you will be fine.

Eddygee53

Eddygee53

JRCivic1

Chump ??? I am not judging... the thought never crossed my mind. It is just that it takes a whole lot more than a medium level camshaft to make that kind of power. How much compression do you have ??? What other mods have you done ??? Any cylinder head work ??? Can you post the dyno sheet please... I would love to see how you made that power and how it charts.

Eddygee53

ill look for the dyno sheet and post it when i find it, should be on my old phone...but to answer your question....

14.2cr JE 87.5mm pistons and rings, k tuned H beam rods, stock k20a2 crank, oem bearings, stage 2 BC cam with the valve spring kit(no retainers like mentioned before), milled the head .001, DC header, cant forget the ebay CIA 😂, 1000cc injecter dynamic injectors, e85 and to make everything work together hondata kpro v4. Plan was to do a high compression turbo build after the break in.