i was wondering what you guys thought about this. this spring i'm doing heads and cam and on my stock heads i want to just hand port and polish them a little pretty much just clean up the rough spots and take them to the machine shop and have them put in 2.02/1.57 valves, springs, and locks. aftermarket heads are so expensive and i think i can get just as much out of the stockers for a lot less. just let me know what you guys think.

 

As far as i know all aftermarket LS1 heads except AFRs are basically stock castings ported, posished, etc etc depending on what stage you get. I say if you're pretty confident in you're porting abilities then sure do it urself! Not saying you will but if you did mess something up im sure you can pick up another set of stock castings pretty cheap and try again! Hope that my 2 cents helped ya, Good luck & hope it works out for you!

 

you won't get much improvement by just smoothing out the rough spots.for a production head,the ls1 is pretty smooth compared to the old small block chevy head,and flows very good as is.at the least,you would need to trim the guide bosses down and blend the bowl into the seats to see a decent gain,IMO.if you feel this is something you could do,then go for it.there are several guys on here who have had good results from doing this themselves.do a search on home ported heads,there is some good threads on the subject.but if you send your heads to one of the sponsors, that will save you 200-300 dollars depending on the core charge.doing that it's possible to get a stage 1 type job done for around 1000.00,maybe less.