I'm thinking about getting a bare or cracked set of heads to practice porting on. What are some good bits to get for the job. What else will be needed. Anyone have any advice to do a nice job on them. How do you know how big you can port the heads w/o drilling through them. I just want to see what kind of job I can do so I can see if I want to do my own. Thanks for the help guys.

 

Messing with one set of heads will not stack up to years of experience by the pros...

That aside, if you still wanna do it, you'll need a helix burr and some roll cartridges/mandrel. Standard Abrasives posts a walkthrough for a basic head cleanup on their site.

 

Trust me its not worth it, I know, you spend more money in the end & still don't have half the performance of the porters, Lloyd charges $400 just to port I belive for a good job, this doens't include valves etc... Just porting, see why I mean its not worth it?

 

I've been wondering the same thing redhottg2. I have been wondering what to go by when porting... I have a set of old camelhump heads that, in order to be functional on a car again, would need a lot of work, so I though that would be my practice set. Really all I would think you would need, would be a dremel kit. But that wouldn't include stepping up bigger valves, just mild porting and polishing.

 

I wouldn't recommend a dremel...I tried one and they simply get too hot and lack the power that I like when porting, Lloyd is porting mine right now since he's be far alot better than I, but due to lack of money after that I'm gonna do my driver car myself. I like a straight die grinder, a selection of carbide cutting bits, cartridge rolls for smoothing, and cross buffs for polishing the exhaust. Clear safety lenses, maybe a bandana or hat to keep shavings out of your hair, and good mechanix gloves. I also bought some cheap head stands that I like. Then plan on a valve job, resurface and tanking, or whatever else is necessary.

Just remember to keep it small at first. I think 1.5 cfm is like 1 HP or something like that, so even a modest 30 cfm gain is about 15 RWHP, and it's easy to get. Just dont overdo it, or try to be Smokey Yunick.

There was a pretty informative site that jordan musser has on mild home porting of LT1 heads, complete with pics. You might try doing a search for it.

 

well I ported mine. I just searched and got lots of pics to use as references on how far you can go. remember that the bowl area and the area in the turn are the bottle necks in the stream. so dont plan on hoggin out the runners totally. you can flatten out the roof (it has a drastic angle stock), open up and smooth the bowls, smooth over the valve seat ring/pocket transition (there is quite a nasty ridge from the factory), then go in and gasket match. on the intake side, be careful at the pushrod pinchpoint. the metal is very thin here. you can feel how thin it is cause you can see on the oil side where the pushrod goes. you can remove SOME material, but go slowly. I cut through one spot and used JB weld to fix it since it was a tiny hole and surrounding thin metal. that is a very easy way to fix it and it will/should hold. on the exh. side, when gasket matching, you will notice that the exh. port is very tiny compared to the size of the gasket. match the gasket to your headers to see where you need to remove or leave the orig. port. on my jethots, you can remove all of it exc. the bottom. as for the valve guides, you can remove alot of material from them. you'll notice that in all the pics of ported heads compared to the stock LT1 heads.

on another note, for the money, let Lloyd do it for you. but if your like me, and have time but not alot of money, and /or just want to learn how, go ahead and do it yourself. I didnt expect to get near the flow the pro's do, but I ended up geting alot closer then I thought. if you want to check/compare your work, then you can get the heads flowed. it only cost me like $30 to flow one intake port and one exh. port. so do one port, take it in and get it flowed, and the guys that are flowing it can usually give you some pointers so then you can do the others better then the orig.

tools you'll need.

1)valve spring compressor to dissassemble heads
2) air compresser
3)die grinder
4) regulator for the die grinder (speed control)
5)full porting kit from starndard abrasives (summit)
6) set of non-forrus (alum) grinder bits. short/medium/long small head and big head


here's my pics of my heads
http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/iro...ss86/my_photos

plus some other sites

http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/int.../interceptorss

http://members.***.net/gmarengo/

enjoy
chris

 

I see you didn't go very far at all, I went quite far & it started looking real nice the set I did for my dad, except I got half way through & even though it looked nice I figured screw it & sent them to lloyd, & they were starting to look real nice, I just figured if I spend the money to do the swap I might aswell get the better of the heads.

 

There is certainly nothing wrong with getting a set of junk heads to practice on and see what you can do. My best advice for a beginner is to go out and get David Vizard's book on how to modify SBC cylinder heads. Lots of good basic info on the head shapes. Take your finished port to a shop that can flow test it and compare it to a stock port.

As for the porting itself, on the intake just stick to the bowl area under the valve and also widen the short side radius a little but DO NOT grind on the short side radius itself. Check out http://www.revolutionaryperformance.com/projects.htm to read about flowbench testing.

 

I used a die grinder with some carbide bits on 6 inch long shanks.

The only thing I had to buy was the carbide bits and sanding roles and cross buffs for polishing.

It is not easy to port heads.

I spent more than 35 hours in porting and my heads only flowed 253/178.

It was the first time I had ever removed any cylinder head from any vehicle. It was the first cylinder heads I had ever ported.

Having said that I can't wait to do another set or take mine back off and port them out even farther.

It is a hard, but good learing experience.

I could have sent mine to lloyd and they would have flowed better, but I would not have the porting knowledge and experience I gained from doing it myself.

 

Don't forget to wear a respirator!! Aluminum shavings = not good for the brain