If the head has the mounting holes for the cam angle sensor at the front you can swap between rear and front. So check that the head has the mounting holes. you can just see the sensor in the first photo through the inlet cam gear.
The engine below has a fwd dohc 6-bolt block with a rvr turbo head from a 7-bolt hence the front cam sensor and rear block-off plug. The inlet manifold is from a evo4. The crank sensor is a kiggly 6-bolt crank trigger. The water flow through the head has been reversed so the water outlet is at the front of the head. This engine is going in an old Galant GTO.
From what I've seen, all the DOHC heads (not the later EVO IV onwards reversed ones though) have the mounting bosses for the front cam sensor, but they aren't drilled unless the motor actually had the sensor form the factory.
I've got an EVO III head sitting on the bench right next to me, and it's got the mounting bosses. I had a couple of the cam wheels with trigger plates sent over from the US. I'll buy the sensor new, as they're pretty cheap, drill and tap the mounting bosses and it'll be all good I reckon :-).
Both the crank and water pump pulleys are standard fwd dohc 6-bolt items. To align the rwd water pump pulley I pulled the mounting flange off the pump, reversed it and pressed it back on to the correct level using the original fwd water pump as a guide. The flange needs to be reversed to be able to press it to the required level. Also, while the flange was off I milled the rwd pump so it cleared the dohc timing belt etc using the fwd pump as a guide to where and how much needed to be removed.
That is golden information, thankyou very much. I'll be tackling exactly the same task soon, so cheers for trail-blazing :-).
Did you press the FWD pump flange onto the RWD pump? I seem to remember that the RWD V-Belt and FWD Multi-Rib pulleys had different bolt PCD's? Wouldn't be hard to redrill the fwd pulley for the rwd pump PCD though.
You're welcome. The water pump pulley pcd's are the same between fwd and rwd. The only difference apart from v-belt v's multi-rib and offset is that the centre bore is slightly different and that some fwd pulleys have a locating dowel pin.
