Is there anything to be gained to say simply smoothing out the casting in the ports on the stock heads? I will be putting a lower mileage, used engine in the car soon to get it back on the road (since it has sat for over a year) while I work on eventually building my current 4-bolt block to a 385 stroker. I would like to put a mild cam (<6300 RPM) and replace all the gaskets and milling the heads down to boost compression (for E85).

As much as I would like to do even LE1 heads, at this CURRENT TIME, I'm not going to spend much on this used motor, but would like to have get a little extra power out of it. While the heads are off for milling, would it add any extra HP to say do some mild home porting, as in just smoothing out some of the casting in the ports, and polish the exhaust ports? I don't want to hurt flow by trying to do much material removal and incorrectly changing the port shape, but if some smoothing out the ports would help, even a LITTLE, I wouldn't mind doing that to get a little extra HP and save some $$$.

Any suggestions???

 

Cleaning up the ports won't hurt but won't really gain you anything. Now if you want to search, check out "pocket porting". Opening up the area right under the valve is fairly easy and you will see some gains. Just don't nick the valve seats. That and have someone that knows what their doing give it a fresh valve job.

 

thereoretically yes but the smaller the gain the harder it is to quantify.

 

Get David Vizard's book on porting and have at it.

Rich

 

I agree, David Vizard's book helped me. I was rewarded with a 12.36 @ 110 mph with a
LT4 Hotcam and a few hours of my time on the stock heads.

 

Awesome , thanks for the recommendation ---