Port matching head/intake

[nbristow01]

Been port matching my intake and head today. Very very simple to do. And very rewarding. Made a paper template with a crayon rub over and used a tapered cutter on my dremel. You can get the tapered cutters at Home Depot and the Dremel as well. If you can get the dremel with the flexible shaft do it. It is easy to grip, small diameter so you can clean the ports all the way to the turns. The cutter cuts slow and easy depending on how hard you push. A couple of seconds and youll get the hang of it.

As in most cases the intake ports are smaller than the head ports by 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch. No metal to remove from the head, just the intake. You can buy a carbide abrasive bit and smooth out those burrs and pits in the head and manifold also and i will be doing that next weekend. You don't want to polish the ports like glass, this will end up giving you idle and low rpm issues. just smooth them out some and only about an nich to a inch and a half into the port. Thats all you need unless you are high rpm racing. Not a super polish but a honed type finish. Will help with flow and give a bit of exrtra horsepower. For How much?? For FREE, just a bit and your own labor

Day 2 ....now that I have all the ports opened up with the cutter I begin smoothing the out with a medium grit polished. You want to make sure your openings are not just a short radius but more of a taper to the opening. This is a good tool to go it with. Just be patient. The polisher will cut slower but will give a great taper and a finish at the same time. I used a medium grit to give a smooth but not polished finish...basically to make it feel about the same as the untouched portions of the runners

[autoaloha]

did you alter the inlet side too?

[Arshloch]

Those manifolds are usually hogged like the one pictured in the faq article.

I have got one like that already done, just needs a bit of smoothing out.

The head porting on M10 is supposedly extremely good for the period, are there any significant street-worthy improvements to be made there?

[nbristow01]

from what I have read and seen, the heads flow very good as they are. For street applications you may actually see some reductions in performance if you port the heads further. They flow great for low and mid range. racers port them because they need better flow because they run in a much higher RPM range.

This particular manifold has the web casting at the inlet side, I intend on removing this to make it a peanut style. I'm going to run a 38/38 and a 292 cam so that bit of extra volume may help.

So overall for street port mathcing and a light smoothing of the runners is all we really need. The bigger performance comes from things like lightweight flywheels and balancing the engine which I will be doing both

[Harv]

From what I understand, it is easy to make the head worse than better without lots of experience and a flow bench.

John

[nbristow01]

You are certainly right. Best to just leave the head alone. As you may know, racers first CC the chambers until they all have the same volume, then they put it on a flow bench and work the runners until they flow match. Just going at the head will cause an even greater difference in volume and flow. In real life us guys on the street have NO NEED to Jack with these heads. port matching is easy and can be done at home. Thats it, leave the rest be or you are crertian to start hindering your performance. There is a reason racing heads are expensive..because the equipment and time to do it right is expensive. leave the heads to the pros with real shops, not home garages

[nbristow01]

(nt)