well, ive done p&p alot in my shop.
its really simple if you have done it but your new as you said..
so ill give you some tips. but i recommend you take it to a shop
you could easily fuck something up and add to the restriction of your intake/exhaust ports.
To do this job you'll need a rotary tool like a Dremel, preferably something with variable speed control. You'll also need a few different grinding stones and sanding rolls.thats what i use lol! 80 grit works well for the rough shaping and finer grits and grinding stones, especially tapered cone shaped ones, are good for the finer work. You can get port kits that have a variety of grits and shapes, including special pieces for polishing the exhaust ports, but I'm doing this with a basic dremel accessory kit that has a couple different grits and diameters of cartridge rolls, and a few cylindrical and tapered grinding stones. aluminum is softer than cast iron and the material will be removed quicker so it's probably a good idea to start with a finer grit if you're porting aluminum heads.
Some safety glasses are a good idea too, since there will be little metal particles flying around, and if your chuck isn't tightened enough, or if the stone breaks you'll have that flying around as well, and dont hurt yourself... lol.First, you'll have to take the heads off the engine. Make sure you keep the push rods and rockers in order so they go back on the way they came off. Also make sure you check the rods, lifers, etc for wear/damage as its much easier to replace them now than to have to take everything apart again if a worn part breaks later on. Not to mention the damage a piece of broken push rod can cause if it falls down an oil hole into the crank...
This is also a good time for whatever other upgrades you have in mind since the engine is half apart at this point anyways.ok??
The first step after you take the heads off the engine is cleaning up them up a bit so you don't get quite as dirty while you're working. I just used some degreaser and a pressure washer to blast away the bulk of the oil sludge and some of the looser carbon buildup. I dried them with compressed air and then gave them a light coat of WD-40 to keep rust from forming on the gasket surfaces and in the combustion chambers. I used emery cloth(its like a sandng paper for metal... cloth like alright lol) type attachment on a sander to clean off the gasket surfaces.Next, take the intake gasket you will be using and place it on the first head. Be sure the gasket is facing the right way, or all your work will be for naught and your heads will be ruined, since you will have shaped the ports all wrong. I used the manifold bolts to hold the gasket in place for the next part. Use a scribe or something to trace around the inside of the gasket around the intake ports.
ow it's time to get grinding. Enlarge the port openings in the intake gasket surface by removing the material inside of the scribe marks you made. Then blend your now enlarged port opening into the remaining port by removing progressively less material as you move down into the intake port. I ground about an inch or so down the port. You have to be careful not to take out too much at this point because if you do, you might cut into the pushrod hole or a water jacket. This is why it's a good idea to practice on junk heads, so you can see just how much material there is to play with. The grinder can take a lot of material out pretty quickly, so precise handling is a must. I found it was best to shape the ports gradually, with several light passes rather than a couple heavy ones. I found that the corners of the ports were hard to get into with the fat cylindrical cartridge I used to get the bulk of the material out, but a conical stone worked nicely. Also keep in mind that you don't want the intake ports to have a really smooth finish unless you're building a high RPM race engine. A rough finish on the intake ports is required for low to mid range torque so don't bother polishing the intake ports to a mirror finish.The next part of the project will be to smooth the short side radius, where the floor of the port starts to curve down towards the valve seat, and the part of the valve guide that protrudes into the port.
Most production heads have sharp edges on the short-side radius. All you want to do for a basic job is round off the sharp edges to get smoother airflow. You will have to remove the valves and work through the valve opening.You have to be extremely careful when you're doing this, because if any of the rotating parts hit the valve seats they could get damaged beyond repair. A severe hit could damage them so badly that a valve job won't fix it. Keeping that in mind, carefully take any sharp edges off the short side radius and the roofs of the valve pockets. Also grind a bit off the valve guide boss so that it doesn't jut out into the intake port as far.You'll need to use different small-diameter, tapered and straight cartridge rolls to reach everything. You can put a lot of work into shaping the radius for optimum flow but you need a flow bench to test that and it's outside of the scope of this basic DIY job.
When you're satisfied with the intake ports, it's time to move on to the exhaust side. This side is a little different than the intake side, the smoother you can get the finish the better. This is because combustion byproducts like carbon like to stick to the rough surfaces in the exhaust port. My heads had tons of carbon in the ehxasut side, probably because the casting was really rough, there were ridges of excess casting in there too, those spots were particularly carbon encrusted.Smooth the rough casting with something like a 40 or 80 grit, smoothing the rough edges on the radius and valve guides. I like the ball shaped stones for getting the rough casting around the valve boss. Next get the port walls as smooth as you can with finer grit rolls. The point here is to get them as smooth as possible so the carbon has nowhere to stick. The ideal finish here is like a mirror, so polish them as much as you want until you're happy. Have a lot of rolls when you're doing this, I found that the finer grit rolls wore out pretty fast. A small buffing ball that fits down the port would be a great way to finish them off.
Also, having a bright light to shine into the port helps a lot, and since there was a lot of dust from the carbon buildup I propped my shopvac hose up by the opposite end of the port that I was working on to suck the dust away. Without it, The dust tended to swirl around in the port and made it hard to see what I was doing. When it did land, it piled up in the bottom of the port and any time the tool got too close to it, it would stir up again.My heads had lots of carbon buildup, so after putting the old valves back in to protect the valve seats, i scraped away as much of the carbon as I could, then used a wire brush tool on the dremel to polish up the chambers a bit. I didn't get a very smooth finish with this, but I didn't want to take much material out here. You will also want to grind any sharp edges in the combustion chamber, as they can get red hot during engine operation and cause pre-ignition. Again, when grinding the edges only take off enough to make them smooth. Don't get carried away and bugger up you compression ratio. You should try to be consistent from chamber to chamber, so that your compression ratios will be even across all the cylinders. If you want to, you can polish the chambers up to a mirror finish as long as you don't take out too much material. Depending on your heads you might also want to unshroud the valves.ok that isnt as simple as it sounds lol... member bro, i got practice, your a noob lol, jk
so now That's it for the heads, take them to your favourite machine shop and get a valve job. After all that work porting the heads, it would be kinda dumb not to get a good three angle job. If you have access, it'd be cool to have them bench tested before and after to see how much of a flow gain you got for your efforts.
Now the heads are done, and it's time to move on to the intake manifold. Get out the intake gaskets you used to scribe the intake side of the heads and put them onto the intake manifold. Make sure that the correct sides face the manifold. Scribe an outline of the inside of the intake port openings on the manifold.
Port-match the intake manifold the same way you did the heads. If you're using an aluminum intake, remember to use a lighter touch as the aluminum is softer and easier to grind.
wheww that was a pain for my fingers...
alright good luck,
sincerely one tired mugensix.
