EJ20 cracks

The EJ20 (S20) cylinder head castings are notoriously prone to cracking in the combustion chamber. These cracks typically run from the spark plug to the valve seats on both sides and can also extend down the spark plug hole. Unfortunately, there is no permanent fix for this issue aside from replacing the heads entirely.

As a rule of thumb, we classify these heads as unusable ("junk") if the cracks extend more than four threads down the spark plug hole. This is done out of caution, although we’ve never experienced a failure with heads exhibiting these cracks. In fact, we’ve worked on and made over 800whp with these heads without issue. That said, we cannot offer any guarantees for this casting.

Using these heads is entirely at your own risk, as the cracking is a known flaw inherent to the OEM design.