Contacting VH OGs- 2025 (Mettler, Wes, Jesda, Defrag, etc)

[SwervingVH]

Most of the photos and information posted on these engines have been rage-deleted some 10+ years ago, without ever coming to fruition. Thanks Defrag010 and Mettler!
Abandonware, but the engine is still very much alive!

I currently have 10 of these engines in my shop .
Looking for Anybody that used to work on them.
Contact info, call, email, etc.
I have read every single post ever made on facebook regarding VHs.. Countless dead ends. Unproductive commenting; a few brags.

-Contacted Hartley, but completely stone-walled. He's got bigger fish to fry.

-PerformanceVH is a terrible company. Eric Getz cant answer his phone, email, ship a product after its been paid, or respond to a PP dispute.
Took several months to get money back. Send the parts or refund the money, FFS.
I advise any and everyone to stay far away from that scammer. Paypal claim was horrible.

-Mazworks offered to "consult" me on how to "engineer" an exhaust flange.. insane
-Xcessive motorworks parts look like crap - and function accordingly.

Q45dot org sends me here. via the contact page.

If you have any Aus or Kiwi friends who run one of these engines, fwd me their contact info, or have them post in the thread.

I search every night across the world for months (years) on end, trying to scrape the last bit of information I can find. My end-goal is to get these engines back on the radar and in the arms of well-off aftermarket companies like PRP, Bullet, Plazmaman, SCE gaskets, ARP, etc.

They are Lighter than an RB, They have more cyl, they have more displacement, they are shorter, they are more torsionally rigid. Closed deck, tons of aluminum behind the sleeves. Comes in AWD variant. Has Non-VVT variant, also has dual timing chain version. (Does anyone know about the M60B44 builds? Check out Mykks hotrod with jag supercharger.)
Huge 6 bolt mains with a girdle. Ford FE guys would kill for this. Blocks good for 3500 HP+, holds NA Nissan record of 830hp on alcohol. The heads are the same rocker/lifter arrangement as an Evo or SR20, while out flowing both. You see K24 V8s, but not SR20 V8s, because this is it, and everyone so glazed on the RB, they passed the best one. I digress..


My Requests:

Any photos of old VH engines from their heyday.
Superstock, Nitro, Blowers, NA, Boats, etc. (finding old jpg arent around anymore)

Info on Valvetrain:
1. How much shim under the lifters? - 1.5mm+ and the O-ring pops out, so 1mm shims? or is .5 better?
2. How did anyone get lash caps on the stems, and how did you fit them in the rockers? New valves might be the only way to lift that end up.
3. Do people modify/clearance the rocker body to keep from tapping the retainer at high lift?
4. What was the 7mm Ex Guide we use to get rid of this dead-weight solid 8mm stem? I've been Xraying my valves and they are all solid.
5. SR20 GTiR inner springs fit (allegedly), but do VE inners fit? Clears 8mm exguide seal?
6. SR20 GTiR Inner seats fit, but only from the exhaust side. The intake seats need ID enlarged. What are the dimensions, how do they compare to VE inner seats?
7. Whats the coil bind (max lift) on those inners?
8. Doubling stock outer seats, OK? *Z28 SBC springs could fit with the seat cut down*
9. Curtain area of stock valve is approx.. 38mm (invalve)/4 = 9.25mm. So +10mm (0.393") lift is pointless (Mazworks was the only one on record to have more than 10mm lift) unless the intake valve size is increased, which is dont look like theres much room for. I have seen siamesed seats.. Hartley claimed "just under 10mm" That leaves most of the wiggle room in the duration, and timing (LSA) -"Do you Concur?"
10. Would love to hear about or see any OEM HLA solid lifter conversions.
11. Whats your technique removing these "steel bush" from the oil galley holes?

Info on Bottom End:
1. Oil pump modifications? Mettler spoke of a larger sprocket on the oil pump having room in the front cover, and needing a chain with an extra link. Does anyone have a photo or example of the NZ SS cars? Ported oil pumps and block fittings? Show me, I'll show you mine. Who else Pins the Crank for the oil sprocket?.. Thinking about a new crank sprocket with elongated timing key to stack it all. The Oil pump crank sprocket is 7mm instead of the 5mm key they used for timing gears.. why...
2. For ARP rod bolts, why are people using SR20 kits? The SR20 has a much smaller Rod journal while the YD25 Diesel has much closer journal size and actually share the OEM P/N with the VH45... So why not use YD25 ARP rod bolts..?
3. What was the offered thickness of the previous MLS gaskets? I read about ACL having made them in the past.
4. What crank damper are people running? Details. ATI has been unwilling to help despite being asked several times over many years. I made a hub like VAC motorsports does for the BMWs. Who wants one? What belt config are you running? I am running the WP and an LS alt w/4 rib inline with the 1st 4 rib. the VHR race engines do the same.

Using an off the shelf damper with 4 rib, as close to the OEM 6" as possible, (KA and SR are close, as is VG, so is Mini Cooper balancers if you wanna go with single 6 rib) then you can bolt a SBC balancer to the front of it with longer bolts. Ends up being almost exact dimensions as the OEM. Double damper to get the weight up on a small diameter - still lighter than OEM
Rear crank hub is custom, - Double crank key on the damper! Never know when I might want to bolt another engine to the front... Itching to build a V16 VH90.
Throw in your phasing ideas if you made it this far.

Thank you so much for reading!
I look forward to hearing your answers and stories from the good 'ol days..


Note:
If you have nothing to add but negativity, pessimism, complaints, doubt, etc, I urge you to go back to your social media apps.
Looking for an educated conversation with experienced and mature audiences.
Hence this dinosaur forum. Thx again!

[elwesso]

I'm glad to see there's people still messing around with these things. It kinda seemed liked the engines were going extinct because they were so cheap for so long.

It appears to me you're trying to do some wild NA build if you're talking about all this top-end work.

Just to give you a little context, I've not built a more than stock VH but I do have a bit of background on them and have a VH powered boat (although that hasn't run in ~9 years). I don't know how much I'll be able to help, but I can kind of paint the picture of the community back then. The heyday in my opinion was ~2010-2015. The primary appeal to the VH was the HP (300HP right out of the box) and the cost. It was not uncommon to get clean VH45 for $500 (or heck even a complete running Q45). Use one of the adapter plates available (including mine) to throw a Z32 5 speed transmission on the back and you had a very capable setup that could be had very cheaply. The Z32 5 speed was nice because essentially you could put everything together with mostly stock or junkyard parts.

For folks that wanted a little more HP, most people were boosting. The stock VH could handle ~450 HP pretty easily on completely stock trim (including the ECU). Once you got above that you really ran into several hurdles that you had to overcome to take it further including the valve springs, compression ratio, injector size, MAF capability, etc. Even back then, if you wanted >500 HP, purely from a cost perspective a lot of people didn't do that.

I definitely hear you on the capability of the VH, but there just isn't much available internal to the engine to really take it much further unless someone is willing to custom engineer essentially all new internals. I think some of the major drawbacks that the engine had from becoming more popular is that fully dressed it's not particularly light (LSx is lighter if I recall), its not particularly small (largely from the manifold), and there was no aftermarket support (which is a chicken/egg thing). Again, keep in mind that the vast majority of the people that were doing this were trying to get high HP, low dollar V8 builds.

There were a few folks trying to do NA builds, including Mettler and John Dixon). Not sure if any of them were successful or not, but I do know it was a ton of custom work.