port polishing at home?

[RysRed96GT]

just a thought i had since i have time before i can put the heads on. would it gain anything if i took a heavy sander on a dremel or something and polished inside each port? would i gain anything or just a waste of time? has anyone even done this before?

 

[project91]

i wouldnt recommend it...

 

[twogts4us]

Since my OEM plenum was sitting in a box doing nothing, I've been working all weekend on porting and (will eventually get to) polishing it. I plan to polish the exterior as well. I'm almost done porting (essentially just opening it up and smoothing it out) after about 10 hours labor so far. Fun for me though... I plan to put my Accufab plenum on my wife's 01 GT and put my PnP'd OEM back on my 02. But plenums are cheap...personally I wouldn't take the risk of fudging up new heads. I guess you could dremel off any casting roughness , but I'd resist the urge to go any further than that - no beer! Best of luck!!!

 

[KJ Hoppus]

i did mine, the engines not in the car yet, but i would think that it would flow a little better because of the smoothness compared to the roughness

 

[Dark Knight GT]

If you can get each port evenly smooth with the others, then hey, what the hell get to it. If not, then I say leave it alone.

 

[FallenPhoenix]

smooth isn't always good. Swirl and all that crap I really don't understand yet are affected by tiny things, so if you don't really know what you're doing, unless you can afford to replace it, I'd leave it to the professionals. I wouldn't practice on a pair of heads for the first time, maybe a plenum like twogts said.

 

[rob1]

Thats probably not a good idea. You will never get each hole 100% accurate with a dremel. It may hurt you later on. Just my opinion.

 

[RysRed96GT]

just to clarify, im not talking about actually PORTING the heads, im simply talking about polishing the inner surfaces, so there would barely be any changes in port size, just to get rid of any roughness.

 

[FastRedPonyCar]

I posted this same topic like a few months ago and havent' done anything to the heads...yet. One resounding answer to my question was this. Do NOT touch the bowls of the combustion chamber. that could alter the compression ratio and could potentially be disaterous.

You can polish the intake port but leave the exhaust port the way it is (so i've been told). It has something to do with letting the exhaust gasses tumble or something.

If you don't plan on adding a power adder for a while, this will be sufficient. Head porting won't really shine till you add a blower but you'll hate yourself if you don't put custom cams in. Alone they're worth like 30 hp. At least VT cam's are. They'll be going in my car when I put the new heads in.