Cylinder head?

Hi, does anyone know if you can fit a 1.6 or 1.8 GTi or for that matter a 2.0 head onto a 1500 block?  How about the 16 valve heads? I would expect you would need to pocket the block for the valves and possibly have clearence cuttouts machined into the pistons?  :dontknow:  Has anybody got any ideas or information on this?
Cheers, Andy B  :twisted:

The later heads have an oil return that the early blocks do not have (assuming it is an early 1.5), so you would have to block that portion of the head.  You might not have to machine clearance in the pistons for valves (you may have enough).  Machining the block for valve celarance is not really an option (to much risk of killing your piston rings).  Keep in mind that unless you are talking about a really early 1.6 GTI head (which I don't think has the oil return) with the flat face like the diesel, part of your combustion chamber is in the head.  That means that if you fit the larger head, you lower compression.  If you are going turbo, you might want that, otherwise it's bad.

One other point to keep in mind.  You will be using the larger head gasket on the smaller block.  That means that you are creating a thin ring of combustion space between the head and the block.  That thin ring is going to make hot spots and is likely to capture hot pieces of unburned gunk.  Both situations will lead to easy engine knock.  Putting little heads on big motors is okay.  Putting big heads on little motors can cause problems.

I have certainly never tried, myself, so I am just using basic background info.  It could be fun to try to see what happens, but I wouldn't want to try it on anything I cared about.

Matthew