Porting Nailheads, Tips? Do's? Dont's?

Me and my engine builder are getting ready to do some porting on my heads, they suggested doing the short turn and such, smoothing up the ports, etc. The head porter at the shop i use is amazing. the heads have already been fitted for the new, bigger stainless valves, seats cut and throated ports. Any feedback is appreciated. :TU:

 

Get in touch (PM) Bob W. 66gsconv, he can give you some tips. He is quite the accomplished porter on Nails.

 

Thanks for the vote of confedence Tony. Untill I get to the dyno and track this late spring early summer I dont know if anything I have done really works. If you want real tips go to the guys that that do it everyday, Greg G or Mike Lewis. I would say they know what makes these nailheads tick :TU:

 

basicly, all I do is smooth , blend, to keep from hitting water.....

 

Doc, from what I have seen that is very good advice

 

Thanks,,,,,no, I never try to ''hog out'' the ports on a nailhead....too much risk,,,95% of the improvement of performance on nailheads will be the combo of smoothing, blending, bowl shape, cam profile, and valve profile....not ''hogging out''..... for all out race engines like on a gasser, or dragster, go for it... but on a street driven car,,, stick with what I and 66 outlined.....

 

Here is what I did, Bowl blending port matching, lay down the short side radius, port and polish the exhaust runners, port the intake, no hogging out just clean up the casting marks, feel with your finger and look to see what needs to be smoothed out and polish the chambers, I swirl polished the valves also. Send them out for a good 3 angle valve job and sufacing clean up al the bolt holes and then have them bench flowed just to see how I did.

 

they look great, what kind of flow numbers did you end up with ?

 

They look good.That is a lot of work you did there. Is the exh. gasket matched? Any guess where your cfm will land? I do like the finish you put on everything. Hope you share where the cfm lands when you find out. :TU:

 

They will be sent out today for flow bench the valves will be cut and back cut. Will let all know the numbers when I get them back. Yes they were all gasket matched Intake and Exhaust. The head porter who will flow these told me Wow! you have alot of hours into these.He said nice work. Every day I would spend a couple of hours on them.Some times if I had too much beer I would do crazy stuff like polishing or swirl polishing valves.

 

I am doing some grinding on my heads also. Who knows how it will turn out


---------- Post added at 10:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 AM ----------

Snake it sounds like we have the same porting methods. Nothing better than a friday night out in the shed behind the trees, turn on the music, pop a cold one and watch the metal fly:laugh::beers2:

 

My wifey will never understand, feels theraputic at times.I get a great feeling of accomplishment too. We probabley when to different schools together!

 

To Snake and 66gsconv, Those look great. Snake, i'd greatly appreciate if you could tell me the flow numbers off your heads, looks like you did a ton of work.

 

Sure, I will post the numbers when I get results.

 

Here is what the intake and exh. runners look like. This is after a little porting and then made the molds. I just was wanting to see what was really going on. I dont do this as a job, I did this in my shed and it took a couple of trys before I was able to pull them out and keep them from together. Hope it helps:TU:

 

i have wanted to do this with a intake,,, what material is that and where can I get some of it?????

 

looks like you got a handle on it.:grin:

 

Here are a few more pics, a trick I learned from and old school porter especially with reguards to the short side radius and how small it is to get a tool in there, get tape sand paper cut it long ways and use it like your shining shoes or a hand saw put it thru the pocket and port and pull back and fourth. You will be surprised on how it takes that area down. Slow and steady win the race!

 

They Look good snake. Gonna be good to see what they flow. Did you open the opening any on the intake or exh. ?

 

Port matched them, opened the pockets just below the seats and used a bent copper wire at 90* to match the port exit use it all the way back the port like inside calipers or a port card. Have to be very carefull I hit a bolt boss with a lentile size hole, but I can sleeve it no biggy. But before you port exhaust look real good of were you could cut thru.



Opened up the exhaust ports to match the manifolds I ported, the collector is opened up to 2 1/4'' I wouldnt hog them any more than that, leaves them too thin.