Porting heads, worth it?
Thread Starter
On The Tree
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 162
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Porting heads, worth it? I wanted to take up a weekend project. Me and a freind are going to port the head on my 99 z28. Is it even worth doing on a car with just exhaust and LID? Someone told me you could see some nice gains from doing it. I dont think it would hurt to try. I read that you can mess up so I will be careful, but I didnt really see anywhere if there are any real gains in HP.
head porting is a very very technical job. i started when i was 13 porting heads, now that i'm older and read things like books on how to truly port heads my entire philosphy towards it has changed. every little bit helps that you do the correct way but if you mess up there is really no fixing it unless you can reweld pieces in. especially on ls1 heads. there are swirl vanes that look like big obtrusions in the port but if you take them down to much u've got coolant going all over the place. if you are going to do it though you might wanna read up a bit first or go over in the internal forum and do a search on home head porting. good luck. oh btw its not a weekend job...i've done full race heads that take days...upon days.
There are several decent threads on this in the internal
engine section. One guy has posted cross-sections of
LS1 heads showing the wall thicknesses, which is handy.
I just bought a set of junk 317s to do the same. There
is a lot of conflicting advice out there (some folks say
kill the swirl ramp, others say just smooth it, etc.). If you
are going to do your own, I think you're best off getting
a used pair of clean heads and messing on those, just so
come Sunday night when you have one looking good and
one with a hole into the water jacket, you can still drive
to work on Monday.
engine section. One guy has posted cross-sections of
LS1 heads showing the wall thicknesses, which is handy.
I just bought a set of junk 317s to do the same. There
is a lot of conflicting advice out there (some folks say
kill the swirl ramp, others say just smooth it, etc.). If you
are going to do your own, I think you're best off getting
a used pair of clean heads and messing on those, just so
come Sunday night when you have one looking good and
one with a hole into the water jacket, you can still drive
to work on Monday.
Absolutley Jimmy, I think Hysteria is testiment to the fact that novice ported heads do yield some gain. He is putting down like 395 whp with a hotcam, thats pretty damn good. And I am the guy that posted the cross section pics. These are a ton of help and done on some practice heads I knew I would destroy. I suggest everyone doing their own home heads should do a practice round before going to their end result. Ask alot of questions, and take it slow. Hell I bought a set of 98 heads (853) for practice and am porting a set of 241s I bought to go on the car. Plus I still will have the heads that are on my car now to play with as well. 3 total sets of LS1 heads are a good number for me.
Brandon
Brandon
I totaly agree. I have been porting heads on the side for over 10 years and I just in the last couple of years came out publicly that I do this kind of work. You will get some gain even with stock cam. TAKE YOUR TIME, and research. Like what was said before there are good threads about it here.
