my friend got his heads off his car. all he did was polish the ports on the intake and exhaust. and polished the manifold up. his heads really didnt have much casting defects maybe equelent to 60 grt sand paper. Did he gain much or was that a waste of time because he didnt port. He said he talked to a local porter and since his cam wasnt that big he told him that sould do the trick. So what you think???

 

you wouldnt really gain anything from just "cleaning" up the heads, IMO

 

JEEZ if you go thru the trouble of R & R the heads do it right , IMO.

 

i thought the rough casting was suppose to help atomization, might not be important on a EFI car though.

 

Yeah, i also know some old school guys who said to leave the intake rough to promote turbulence and mixing, but polish the exhaust to get it the hell out of there It is possible to have too much turbulence in the combustion chamber. I think the shape of the combustion chamber would have a much larger effect than the intake path roughness though.

Personally I don't think he's accomplished anything with just a polish

 

if your friend spent less than 3 hrs on the heads then i see no reason to say he wasted his time. even just smoothing out the intake and exhaust ports is better than they came stock. as far as atomization goes... id think a rough intake runner would have more tendancy to capture and prevent some fuel from making it into the combustion chamber than aiding in atomizing it.. just my personal opinion though and im no professional head porter. but to be honest that sounds like one of those old wives tales

 

The truth is you want the intake to be smooth but not polished for better fuel atomization...Basically you want it to look like it was sandblasted but a little bit smoother and the exhausts should be almost a mirror finish...as told to me by a true head porter who is a sponsor on this board

 

Polishing sure makes things look nice.

 

I hear HVH used to charge $1000 a set to polish a set of ports. That's on top of the head porting.

Bret