[Nacho]

Originally Posted by kblake

First off, the gen 2 head is easily modified to accept the high lift cams you are referring to. Secondly, I only know of less than 10 people in North America with setups that might require a high lift cam, vs. a standard 272/272 or the increasingly popular 272/264 staggered cam setup.

Good story. Big cams still don't fit without mdification to the casting.

With it's larger ports, using 1mm oversized valves, the ratio is actually better than a gen 3, and the head will flow more CFM than a gen 3 with the same port job. Chris K. has built some of the most powerful 3SGTE's on the continent, and he prefers the Gen 2 head. He's posted flow bench results comparing both heads, and proving the ported Gen 2 flows more. That's good enough for me.

Yes. Toyota went backwards in their design, and has based their most successful race 3S cars in JGTC and WRC on a poorer head design. It makes perfect sense. Why put R&D into making it better when we can make it worse?

More isn't always better. With honda cars, the B18C1 head flows MORE, but the B16/B18C5 head flows better. The latter makes more power. IBhonduhsDontMatter

If you are doing cams, you should be doing a shimless bucket conversion at the same time, and shimless > shim under bucket.

Shim under bucket won't puke the shims out, so there's much less reason to convert. You still can, if you want to toss money away.

That's all stuff that gets thrown in the trash once you go past bolt-ons. It's the stuff that you pay extra to get with the Gen 3, and then you wind up having to replace it anyway, once you go for serious power. I don't know about you, but I hate buying the same part twice because I didn't plan well in advance.

Ken

Likewise, why not spend the extra up front and not have to spend MORE replacing inferior parts? riddleMR2 made 312 on his t3/t4 MR2 on the stock gen 3 ECU and an FPR. He made 316 on the Blitz ECU after it was tuned. Seems like the stock ECU is pretty capable. And without the huge restriction of the MAF, there's even less reason to swap it out.

Unlike the gen 2 part, the gen 3 intake manifold isn't a huge restriction, nor does it cause failure with the cyliners going lean.

I agree that if you want to get crazy nasty with the car and make it a 2.3L beast or something of the like, might as well start with the gen II for less cost. However, if you're not planning on basically reworking the entire thing, the gen 3 is a better choice. Hell, the closer ratio transmission w/LSD alone is usually the price difference.