I was just curious. Can you port out and polish the ports on exhaust headers? Well, I know you can, but would this do anything beneficial? Just an idea I had, though I'd ask you guys if you knew anything about this.
I'm going to take a guess when you say headers the,"S" is a type-o The 2.3L(T)s only have one exhaust side.
As for porting a header I would say not possible since the tubes on them are usualy very thin. (This is a opinion only) The only thing I can think of is polishing up the casting marks and the seems. Now if its a stock cast iron mainifold, you should be able to port and polish it a bit
The benifit of any exhaust porting allows the motor to get reed of the used gases more effiniently. The quicker and smoother the motor gets reed of the old burned up gasses the quicker it can intake clean fuel to burn. Its kinda like this; its easy to get fuel/air into the motor but its harder to get it out. Look at a Nitrous cams for V8 guys they have more exhaust lift than intake lift, I believe this is the same on turbos and blower motors.
Yes as Pro Hawk said porting tubular headers would be a very bad idea other than port matching and I would not do that. Most header tubes are bigger than the exhaust port. Compare your exhaust manifold or header gasket with the exhaust port and the header flange to be sure.
As Pro Hawk mentioned the tubes are thinner and porting can create a weak spot.
Yes, when I said headers I meant header. So, am I right in saying that we have come to the conclusion that porting the header ports is a bad idea, but polishing them could help to allow the burned exhaust gases to exit faster? Thanks for the input guys. Will I notice any power or throttle responsiveness increase with polished header ports as opposed to unpolished? Also, I have one more question. What type of compound should I be using on these header ports? Just polishing compound with a polishing end, or should I be using something specifically designed for this kind of thing? Any additional input would be appreciated. By the way, I plan to do this to a Ranger header, as my new exhaust is going on sometime in the next 4-6 weeks.
I have no idea on this since I've never done it or really never heard of people doing it either. I do know that people have just bolted a Ranger tube header on a N/A 2.3L motor and got good results from it without doing work to it.
Well, what substances to machinists use to polish the ports on cylinder heads? If this substance is easily accessible to the public, then I could always use that.