Milano engine rebuild - S cam/piston questions

["Bill MacFarland" <bmacfarl@domain.elided>]

Dear Cogniscenti,

Hello, I am a long time lerker on the digest, but have only posted a
few times.  The digest is always an interesting read and definitely has
the most personality of any of the lists I'm on. I'll admit, though,
I'm still trying to understand that tea-tray thread...

My '88 Milano Verde is in need of an engine rebuild and I have been
researching the subject (including the alfa-digest archives).
Occasionally I see mention of Milanisti/GTV-6isti installing 164S cams
or pistons, but there is not much discussion on the benefits of doing
this. What kinds of performance gains are achieved and even more
important, what kinds of driveability sacrifices are made?

I am not building a race engine, but my well deserving Milano
definitely deserves some performance increase. Is installing both
S-cams and S-pistons worth it if I am not going to port/polish the head
and install headers and a full low restriction exhaust?

Finally, I plan to do as much work as possible myself on this rebuild,
but things like rebuilding the heads will be left to the experts. What
other tasks are of sufficient difficulty or require special tools that
I might leave these tasks to the experts?

Oh, one other last question, other than the workshop manual, what other
literature would be useful on this subject - the Braden book?

Thanks, looking forward to hearing from you.

Bill in MD
'77 Fiat Spider
'88 Alfa Romeo Milano Verde
'01 Audi S4 Avant


-- 
  Bill MacFarland
  bmacfarl@domain.elided
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