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It is perfectly fine to put an 88 B202 head on an 86 block, and to swap the intake cams around, too.
I think you are confusing the original poster's 86 with the one-year-only 85 B202 head, which did have staggered cam lobes but equal valve sizes (that is, per cylinder, both intake valves were the same size, and both exhaust valves were the same size, but different from the intake valve size). The 86-93 head also has equal-sized valves (in fact, the same sizes as the 85), and equally timed, not staggered, cam lobes for a given pair of valves, for a given cylinder.
86-93 (+94 convt.) B202 heads were fundamentally identical, differing only by the cam bearing oil system update (mid-88, IIRC), and I believe there were some revisions to coolant plumbing/passages at some point. (Come to think of it, it may be a good idea for the original poster to ensure the external metal coolant plumbing on the 88 is the same as the 86, though I want to say the change might've happened in 90?? Or maybe it was only the plumbing that changed, not the outlet on the head. Can't recall...)
Anyway, as noted above, there were no staggered cam lobe pairs on 86-93 cams, either, unlike the 85-only. You can easily see this by holding an 86+ cam up like sighting a gun, closing one eye and focusing on a pair of lobes, which will perfectly align.
The only element that differentiates a B202 head on a Turbo vs. a non-turbo is the intake cam. There weren't separate head castings for Turbos and NAs, nor were there different kinds of valves for one type or the other. This is all in the EPC.
Meanwhile, again, the one-year-only 85 Turbo head had staggered lobes to promote swirl, but Saab ditched this in 86, and, IIRC, instead used asymmetrical ports to achieve the same effect. The 85 head also had smaller combustion chambers than 86-93 (it used the same valves as 86-93).
posted by 98.247.253...
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