I am asking because I think I overcammed my car. I know that if I stroke the motor out it will make the cam seem smaller. Will porting the heads do the same thing? I know that head porting is a science/art, and I know that good flow readings are needed to make any accurate assesment of the quality of the port job. I just want to know as a general rule how a simple home port job, not hoggin out the runners, will affect the characteristics of the motor.

 

When I clicked on this I was going to give you the "Power is a function of how much fuel you can burn, which is a function of how much air you can get into the combustion chamber, etc..." routine.

Having seen your question, I would say that the SMART way to correct your cam problem may well be to replace the cam with one that is sized more appropriately.

 

Home porting will not effect the engine much.
If ya went more than 230@50 ya went to big.

Big heads=smaller cam for the same HP level.

 

Thats what I was afraid of. I am still curious though to hear from the guys who really know engines how a mild port job affects the torque curve of an engine.

 

Recon 40 years of engine building leaves me out,HUH.

 

I wasn't questioning your reply 1racerdude we were typing at the same time my post was in response to the statement that I should swap out the cam again. Sorry I don't know how to quote someone elses post in my reply.

 

Click on the QUOTE button in the bottom right corner of the post.

 

thanks I never noticed that button before

 

Everything being identical other than porting your heads, it should drop the pwr band a little since you'll be flowing more air under the curve but still allow you to breath right at higher rpms since it wont be so restricted and be able to utilize that monster cam. Unless you have access to a baret to check each and every chamber/runner/port then a flow bench to check your progress, home porting is at a best a shot in the dark. It will definately help, but it will be impossible to optimize obviously.

If you have the time it's definately worth it siince more air in more air out means more pwr, and often out of the box heads need alot of work and very few actually flow anywhere near what they claim. Roughly 10-15cfm more flow equates to .1 gain in ET at the track.

Right now you'll gain more by stepping back on cam size, seen ithappen a number of times with guys over camming and cid or heads do not completment and they run slow.

 

Most times if you add heads to a setup the HP peak will be higher because most times the cross section of the port will be larger therefore the choke point of the port will be higher.

Bret