Hey Tom Moss

I am not Tmoss (preaty obvious), but I did get to watch him port my explorer lower...

What I got out of watching (it was a neato thing too, thaks a million Tmoss) was the restriction is at the tapper on the runners not the actual port opening. Most of the runners had a inside runner wall like this | / or like this \ | with 1 or 2 runners actually being \ / ( I want to say its #4 & 8 but it was the straightest runners that were the worse for this reason.

While watching him port it he had a drop light behind it and you could see the "cuts" straighten out the runners and remove this restriction.

again this is what I got out of it, and hopefully Tmoss will reply with more info as I realy like the topic.

Port matching will rarely hurt, unless it's done poorly. How much gain you get depends on how much the combo needs the additional air flow. Also, there is porting an intake runner which includes re-shaping the runner in my book, but those who do it themselves may not go that far - so it is a VERY subjeective thing to say an intake was "port matched".

My definition of port matching is just aligning the port edges to eliminate the lip.
My definition of gasket matching is matching both ports to the gasket for the same reason.

In the case of the Explorer intake, the upper and lower aren't even aligned. So port matching via gasket (i.e. gasket matching) could definitely help.

But on the manifold-to-head ports, as long as the ports are aligned, I don't see a big benefit. Kind of like having a 3" pipe with water flowing through, then randomly throw in a section of 4" pipe. In theory it will only cause an energy loss.

I could see port matching them with a nice taper and only open where you need to, rather than matching a gasket thats a lot larger than both ports to begin with. Just my take on it. To keep from taking off more than you need, I would use that machinist spray die stuff. Then you mate the surfaces and see exactly where it needs it.