Hi everyone. I'm new here, so sorry if this info is somewhere and i didn't manage to find it...

A while ago I saw a gas flowed Z22SE cylinder head on ebay, complete with performance cams. It seemed too much of a good deal to pass up on at £200, so I got it.

I decided swapping heads was a bit risky on my everyday car, so looked into just swapping cams over. When I got the rocker cover off my car I noticed the part numbers on the cams were almost the same (apart from an L-xx number), and with some tracing paper I found the profiles were pretty similar. I measured the width/depth of the lobes and found they were the same too (so its unlikely its been reprofiled).

I asked the guy what the cams were - he said he didn't know, but they were german. I'd expected a noticably more agressive profile on them - I fitted a fast road cam to an old Pinto engine and it was really obviously different.

Do you think i've been ripped off? The head was off an Astra, and I've got a VX220. Do the Astra/VX220 use different cams? - could his idea of a performance cam have been to use the VX220 one?

I guess the other question then is whether the head was infact gas flowed. It looks pretty smooth inside the inlets - I can't imagine it being much better for airflow, but what does the stock head's inlet look like?

thanks for the help,