grammerman,
I certainly don't know enough about porting to criticize your work one way or the other (pos. or neg.) but I do like both your approach and your project goals. I see way too much emphasis on peak dyno numbers or ET with an alarming lack of concern for how the car "feels" or behaves during the other 90% of its use (referring to street car build-ups.....this obviously wouldn't be a problem on a dedicated race car).
Hats off to you for having the ambition to try this on your own and the courage to post it here for all to see.
Have no idea why you've gotten so much flak about it....I swear, you'd think it was someone else's heads you were working on from the responses you've gotten.

Anyhow, I applaud your efforts and approach to the project. Best of luck and I look forward to seeing the results....whether they're good or bad it will serve as a model and inspiration for myself and others.

Casey

 

I'm just wondering, because I have no clue pretty much as to what u guys are talking about with the porting...but after reading all of those VERY long posts lol, Grammerman you posted on here looking for advise...people posted their opinion, and after each post you blast them with why they are wrong. Why do you continue to do this? Whats the point of looking for help when cut the head off of your helper? Thanks.

 

For you two guys who want to stir the pot with stuff that's not related to this thread or more criticism using data that is not consistent with what has been posted I say buzz off. The "couple of cc's" removed from the ports stands at about 13 intake and 5 exhaust at the moment, you might try reading the whole post. I offer no apology for asking others to give their opinions or for jousting with people who offer unsolicited advice contrary to rational thought and/or my thread's topic. If you have a problem with disagreements or sometimes heated debate then you might try the Martha Stewart forums.
On with more info. on the post topic. Took a couple of pictures and put them up, links are below. I'd say they are about 90 to 95% finished, a little more smooth out work will be done but the major hogging out needed to support my very "agressive" port job as some called it is done. I came up with a more accurate measuring device so these numbers may not be exactly proportional to some earlier ones, that's why I baselined the unported stuff again. At the current stage of modification port volumes measure 178 cc's intake and 67 cc's exhaust. Using this new measuring equipment a set of the unported intake and exhaust ports ( with the valve job for the 2.0 and 1.56 valves) go 170 and 64. I think the ported exhaust volume of 67 cc's was on one of the smaller ports so increase is probably around 5 to 7 cc's above stock. The original port volumes should have been fairly close though as the Serdi valve job opened up the throats enough to add a couple cc's or so.
The ports look a lot better in good light than in the photos, the texture and shadows are deceptive, the finish is actually pretty smooth now.

http://home.comcast.net/~grammerman/...cs_stage_2.bmp

http://home.comcast.net/~grammerman/...ls_stage_2.bmp

http://home.comcast.net/~grammerman/...cs_stage_2.bmp

 

Hey Casey_SS, forgot to reply to your post. Thanks for the support. I think it's the natural course of things to focus on peak numbers and quarter mile times because we all have egos. My modest port job won't set the world on fire and isn't meant to. Whether it meets my expectations or not people can learn from it.

I owned a recent model GSXR 1000 and GSXR 750 at the same time a couple years ago. The difference in peak power wasn't nearly what the displacement would suggest because they used the same sized valves and the 750 was higher strung in the tuning department. When riding the two bikes the enjoyment and giggle level was about 5 times higher on the 1000. A blip of the throttle would lift the front wheel at 55 MPH where you had to wait for the 750 to come up on the cam for the same excitement. Since I didn't primarily race them I rarely had the throttle pinned to the stop on either bike. At 1/4 throttle the 1000 felt like at least twice the bike. I would have enjoyed riding the 1000 more even if it was down 20 peak HP on the 750 instead of the other way around.

Different strokes for different folks. Considering how your vehicle is used the vast majority of the time when planning a build makes perfect sense to me. I want the most fun I can get from the long green I'm laying down on my build. Eyepopping throttle response and midrange are where it's at for daily driving in my opinion. If I built a daily driver that was tuned mainly for topend power I could only enjoy it when risking a speeding ticket.

Later, Michael

 

grammerman, back to post #28, I really would like to know why you spent the money on larger valves with your ports being the size that they are, and why RaceFlo's? I'm also wondering how you managed to get the final shape of two ports in only 15 min. These will be the two you will be duplicating, correct? Excuse me if I find it hard to believe that after roughing them in you managed to come up with the final shape in that amount of time.
Another thing that has be confused is, why would you need an intake manifold that has both long and short runners? Please explain, as I do not see how a 383 with a small cam and mildly ported heads would benefit much from the short runners. Do you have some sort of idea on TQ and HP #'s with such a set-up? Is it really going to be that much better than what has previously been accomplished? Or do you just have the time and money to experiment untill you find the right combination?
I can appreciate your goals, but I think there might be a little disappointment in your future. But then again, we learn from our mistakes, don't we? I know I have.
Oh and the Martha Stewart thing was very clever.

 

I don't know of any reason why the 2.0/1.56 valves are a bad choice with mildly ported heads. The stock valves have some stem wear from their 111K miles of running in sludge thanks to the previous owner. My engine builder thought it would be a good idea to replace them. At $10 apiece the RaceFlo valves seemed like a good deal.

The 15 minute reference in the most recent post was just a rough estimate on the time it took to smooth out the ports from the original shaping work that was done with a course cutting carbide burr. I spent maybe a half hour or so doing the original shape work with the fast cutting stuff on a pair of ports, since a modest amount of material was removed and only in specifica areas not a lot of time was involved.
I've ported numerous sets of SBC and BBC heads over the years and quite a few two and four stroke cylinders/heads so I pretty much knew what I wanted to do and where to do it before starting. On my first set of heads years ago I probably spent two hours per port so I'm not suggesting that this is a easy Saturday job for a first timer.

The interest in a dual runner intake is from building several engines that used stock and modified TPI and stock LT1 intakes with everything from bone stock heads to big Brodix heads and cams ranging from stock to hot street cams up around 235 degrees duration. With similar engine setups the TPI stuff just plain pulls hard down low and in the midrange compared to the LT1 stuff. The LT1 and L98 TPI engine were pretty similar except for the intakes and had very different driving characteristics. With a properly executed dual runner intake one could conceivably combine the low/mid grunt and excellent throttle response of the TPI setup and better topend than the LT1 by using a somewhat longer runner that would deliver a tuned effect at higher RPM's.

If you haven't driven a sensibly built smallblock with a modified TPI setup you'd probably be surprised how much more fun they are around town and in daily driving situations compared to the LT1 induction. As for learning from your mistakes, I've always been conservative and have never built a badly mismatched combo for personal use. I have learned from others mistakes, I once put a stock TPI setup to replace a single plane 4 barrel setup on a very hot 383 for a guy who was sure it was the hot ticket. He just wouldn't listen. It did what you'd expect and gave a big increase in low/mid punch and completely killed the topend. He was very unhappy about laying down several thousand for the Electromotive EFI and labor.

You might want to do some research and educate yourself a bit more if you believe that having a TPI runner down low and a Stealth Ram'ish runner kick in for top end would be a mistake. Different intakes won't make a 350 outrun a 502 but they can make a 383 feel like a carbureted 454. Having a dual runner intake could be compared to having your cake and eating it too

 

How many cc's are your combustion chambers. Did you "unshroud" the area around the intake valve ?

 

How the hell do you get a dual runner manifold? I thought you either had large or small? I have heard of "dual plane", is that what you ment? Hell, still, how do you get THAT on an LT1 engine?

I sure missed the boat on that one!?!?!? If it takes to long to explain, you got any pictures? I understand pictures, lol.

 

I ventured into where you are once, I had a trashed stock head that West Coast cylinder head wanted to look at to do our conversion on the heads we have now, I said I would send them and give them to them(only one head was damaged) He wanted to slice and dice them to see what they were and what exactly needed to be done for the conversion...I told him I was playing around with one cylinder and I wanted him to flow it for me just to see.....I spent HOURS on that one cylinder, I had the correct tools to do it with and had seen MANY a ported head. It was beautiful(or so I thought)..it flowed so bad that he wouldnt even tell me what the numbers were....you sould have seen this intake port..I thought I was gonna kill them in California, a first timer from Alabama with a KILLER port...NOT....there is ALOT more than meets the eye....just a little 411 for ya.


David

 

David, did you have well researched technical books or other sources of quality info. from which to shape your ports? If you thought you were going to get awesome results from simply looking at other ports and half *** copying them then things worked out as they should have. It's pretty well known that just going in and removing material from where you "think" it would do the most good usually doesn't work out too well, that's not what was done here. I think everyone except me has said something or other about a killer port, get real. Have you actually been following along or did you just read this page? I've been pretty clear that I don't have any expectation that the ports will flow 280 at 180 cc's volume but do expect to see a modest and worthwhile gain. First timer, you really nailed me there. Sorry your first port job didn't work out but so what? You didn't add anything useful from your failure that could help anyone. Here's another useless post by another "expert" that might as well be deleted. I guess it's normal to jab at other people if you couldn't get it done yourself. How exactly having a 11 or 10 or 8 second car qualifies anyone as an expert on torque oriented stout daily drivers is beyond me. There's your 411 hanging low brother


If my heads pick up a percentage increase in flow similar to the volume added I'll be satisified. If it's significantly better I'll be tickled. Now why don't you go play in the 5500 RPM stall room? That is unless you can come up with a new post that adds something useful or at least some criticism based on reality.

 

Maybe your port was the most bitchin best flowin port they ever saw, and they just didn't want to tell you. Then they copied it and use it for a pattern for all their port jobs and made a lot of money off it and won a lot of races. Hmmm?

 

Now that's funny!

I doubt it's true though

 

Yea maybe they sent it to lloyd.

 

Yeh, Yeh thats it yeh


David

 

you seem like a real jerk. i hope you are man enough to post up your head flow results if they are a complete failure.