I am looking at a set of heads from a 03 wrx and i cant tell if they have shimless buckets or not. the owner has no clue. here are some of the pics he sent me. can you tell if they are shimless from these pics?
it looks to me like a shim...why are you getting so uptite about shimless or shimm'd ? it looks like some COMLETE heads so run em!
from what i have heard it is fairly expensive to get the parts to convert the shimmed heads to shimless. Since i want to have a fairly high redline on my build i wanna minimize the chance of throwing a spring, and IIRC shimless buckets will help me there. Thanks for pointing out the shim. i am teh noob when it comes to headworks
Like I said before, if you run anything other than the stock cams you will need to buy new buckets anyways. Not all cams will have the same tolerances, so when you swap cams you will probably need to swap buckets also. Russ
^ so when swapping cams, who do you order the new buckets from? do they need to be custom made for the cams or what?
Those are shimless bucket heads. Once you have cams in there that you are going to use then you need to check the clearences you have with the old buckets and do the math to get the proper shims for the clearence needed. You can order then from subaru. IIRC they are 22.xx a piece.
so they are shimless. would it be more cost effective to get shimless or shimmed heads assuming i am going to be doing new cams and springs. looking at costs it would be about 250-300 for the older 02/03 heads (shimmed) and 400 or more for the late 03+ (shimless) heads. would it be cheaper in the long run to get the older head and convert them to shimless, or get the newer heads?
Yes they are shimless, but as Russ pointed out if you are going to use different cams you will have to replace some if not all of the shims. The last set of heads I did with new cams in 13 out of 16 shims needed to be replaced. If you are going to run a larger lift and duration cam you want to run the shimless buckets! You don't want to know what happens if you don't and you spit out one of the old style shims.
exactly why i am pushing this shimless thing. i am slightly confused here. if i get the shimless heads all i will need will be new shims for the cams and i will be ok. if i go with the shimmed heads i will need to convert to the shimless buckets and get new shims. either way i will need new shims, and it all hinges on how much it would cost to convert the old heads to shimless buckets. cause if i can convert the old style heads for <$200 it is cheaper to go with those. but if it is >$200 it is cheaper to buy the newer heads. any clue how much it would be to convert the shimmed head to shimless?
OK, the 02-03 heads are shimmed heads. There are two parts to a shimmed head. The bucket that the shim is placed in and the shim itself. The adjustment for clearence is done to the shim itself in different thicknesses. The 04-today heads are shimless. This is kind of misleading as instead if two pieces (bucket, shim) now it is just one piece. The one piece is the bucket and they are machined to specific thicknesses, thus replacing two parts with just one called a shimless bucket. If you are planning on running the heads with new cams and never running them with the stock cams I would get a set of 02-03 heads. Install your new cams, measure the lash and do the math to figure out what thickness shimless buckets you will need to have the proper lash.
