To port or not??

If intake manifold ports are larger than the head ports, how do you know what to remove? The block could have been milled or the heads.

afterglow said:

Is this something that can be done with a Dremel and a few carbide tips or is it better left to the pros??

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You need a pneumatic die grinder and a carbide bit. The Dremel doesn't have enough horsepower.

Once you start talking about "left to the pros" you're talking a $500 labor bill on a set of heads that weren't any good to start with............plus parts.

mustangdave said:

If intake manifold ports are larger than the head ports, how do you know what to remove? The block could have been milled or the heads.

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They won't be.

My Performer RPM has bigger ports than my OE Shelby dual plane intake manifold, and both of them are smaller than the stock 289 heads I compared them to.

Milling heads won't affect the cross sectional area of the port, only the volume, and that doesn't matter for this discussion.

I ported a set of stock heads one time because I had a bunch of time to kill. I'd of been better off reading soap operas. There is a reason big time head porters get big money to do that stuff. I mean, you don't do your own dental work right?

Why not?

Same tools, same sort of stuff right? I mean, ANYBODY with a dremel can do a 1.5mm extraction right?

Check out "mustang and fords" web sight. Look in the tech section and you will find a basic head porting 101.

CraigMBA said:

Once you start talking about "left to the pros" you're talking a $500 labor bill on a set of heads that weren't any good to start with............plus parts.

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WRONGO!!!

I went low 11's with '69 351W heads N/A on a 289 in a 3000# car which, according to Moroso's slide rule, figures to about 400 RWHP to do that.

Afterglow, if you're on the east coast and don't want to buy a Makita elec. die grinder and a sewing machine pedal to vary the speed and all the bits and rolls you'll need to do the project, check with Les Schmader www.lesport.8m.com as Les can hot tank, pocket port & bowl blend both intake and exhaust, port exhaust runner mild shape & polish for $150/pair.

Add gasket match the intake runners and you're at $250/pair.

And for the full on job where he full ports the intake and exhaust, it's $350 for the pair, but he needs the specific application. Tell him what you're going to do and he'll tailor a package to your specific needs.

He also stocks AFR heads and has a Superflow bench. Les won't sell you more than you need. That being said, I've never used Les nor spoke to the man, he doesn't even know who I am, but I've never heard anything bad about his work and many, many praises. I plan on sending him a set of FE heads to port one of these days. You can't beat his prices.

It's all stuff you can do yourself, but if you're only doing it once, I don't think it's worth going out and getting all the stuff unless you just like doing stuff yourself.

1320stang said:

WRONGO!!!

I went low 11's with '69 351W heads N/A on a 289 in a 3000# car which, according to Moroso's slide rule, figures to about 400 RWHP to do that.

Afterglow, if you're on the east coast and don't want to buy a Makita elec. die grinder and a sewing machine pedal to vary the speed and all the bits and rolls you'll need to do the project, check with Les Schmader www.lesport.8m.com as Les can hot tank, pocket port & bowl blend both intake and exhaust, port exhaust runner mild shape & polish for $150/pair.

Add gasket match the intake runners and you're at $250/pair.

And for the full on job where he full ports the intake and exhaust, it's $350 for the pair, but he needs the specific application. Tell him what you're going to do and he'll tailor a package to your specific needs.

He also stocks AFR heads and has a Superflow bench. Les won't sell you more than you need. That being said, I've never used Les nor spoke to the man, he doesn't even know who I am, but I've never heard anything bad about his work and many, many praises. I plan on sending him a set of FE heads to port one of these days. You can't beat his prices.

It's all stuff you can do yourself, but if you're only doing it once, I don't think it's worth going out and getting all the stuff unless you just like doing stuff yourself.

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Considering that the going jobber rate in SoCal is $125 a cylinder head to do just a valve job (plus parts) that person is insanely cheap. Too cheap IMO. If the guy is working out of his garage as a side job and loves to chew up shavings, I can almost buy it, but outside of that, he's cutting corners.

Most shops get $75+ a hour for labor. Do the simple math and figure out how many hours he has into those heads. Just because he did the work doesn't mean he helped the head out, or did the work right.

If he doesn't have a flowbench and know how to use it, you don't want him porting your heads.

The guy you quoted gets $500 to actually port a set of heads. The stuff you posted is for the fluff and puff show so you can brag to your buddies at a cruise night. My price is right.

The $500 job is for a full on competition port job. Just because you've never heard of him doesn't mean he isn't any good. He's been doing port work for years. I never heard of Joe Sherman until he won the 1st Engine Masters, but you probably had since he's local to your area. Aluminum heads are for fluff and show to brag to your buddies on cruise night, you don't need aluminum heads to make 400 ponies to cruise with. I think MBA stands for Master B___S___ Artist. Your price may be right for SoCal, but it ain't the same everywhere else in the country. Everyone that knows anything knows that a bowl blend and pocket porting will get more out of your head than a port job, I even got that from Joe Sherman.

you definitely don't want to try to port a set of heads with a dremel tool. i did that once and got 4 intake ports matched and one thermactor bump partially reshaped before the dremel quit. i went out and bought a cheap die grinder from harbor freight instead and the work went much better

A die grinder works good for reshaping but a dremel works good for cleaning things up.

1320stang said:

The $500 job is for a full on competition port job. Just because you've never heard of him doesn't mean he isn't any good.

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That's true, and I'm not tossing your guy under the bus. But you aren't getting a porting job for $150 either. That costs either $350 or $500 depending on what we decide a port job is.

He's been doing port work for years. I never heard of Joe Sherman until he won the 1st Engine Masters, but you probably had since he's local to your area.

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Actually, even though Joe is right down the street from where I currently live, I learned about him the same way as you did - magazines. I've never met the guy.

Aluminum heads are for fluff and show to brag to your buddies on cruise night, you don't need aluminum heads to make 400 ponies to cruise with.

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One could make an argument you don't need 400hp to cruise.

OP has a perfectly decent running engine. Opening it up is gonna cost OP $100 in gaskets and a $350 port job. But that's not all he's gonna find. He'll need to do a valve job (another $250 for both heads) plus whatever parts he needs (valves, seats, ect). So now OP is $400 away from a new set of GT-40x heads which are going to outperform anything short of the $500 port job, assuming he doesn't need to install guides or seats or valves...........see where I'm going? Those cast iron heads still won't ever be as good as the AFR's or the GT40s untouched unless you really get serious and pay the big money to have them ported.

I think MBA stands for Master B___S___ Artist.

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Why are you making a personal attack on me?

Your price may be right for SoCal, but it ain't the same everywhere else in the country. Everyone that knows anything knows that a bowl blend and pocket porting will get more out of your head than a port job, I even got that from Joe Sherman.

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I only recently moved here from a small farming town North of Bakersfield. Quality machine work isn't cheap anywhere.

Just because you CAN spend money on your stock cast iron heads and make them work doesn't mean you SHOULD do it. It's more cost efficent for OP to buy a set of heads than to rework what he has IMO.

CraigMBA said:

That's true, and I'm not tossing your guy under the bus. But you aren't getting a porting job for $150 either. That costs either $350 or $500 depending on what we decide a port job is.



Actually, even though Joe is right down the street from where I currently live, I learned about him the same way as you did - magazines. I've never met the guy.



One could make an argument you don't need 400hp to cruise.

OP has a perfectly decent running engine. Opening it up is gonna cost OP $100 in gaskets and a $350 port job. But that's not all he's gonna find. He'll need to do a valve job (another $250 for both heads) plus whatever parts he needs (valves, seats, ect). So now OP is $400 away from a new set of GT-40x heads which are going to outperform anything short of the $500 port job, assuming he doesn't need to install guides or seats or valves...........see where I'm going? Those cast iron heads still won't ever be as good as the AFR's or the GT40s untouched unless you really get serious and pay the big money to have them ported.



Why are you making a personal attack on me?



I only recently moved here from a small farming town North of Bakersfield. Quality machine work isn't cheap anywhere.

Just because you CAN spend money on your stock cast iron heads and make them work doesn't mean you SHOULD do it. It's more cost efficent for OP to buy a set of heads than to rework what he has IMO.

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one thing that always gets me when people talk about spending big bucks on aftermarket heads they always say stuff like and with the valve job, guides, etc. you are only X dollars away from a good set of aftermarket heads, when eventually those aftermarket heads are going to need all that stuff too. so what do you do when it's time for those aftermarket heads to have a valve job, etc.? buy another set of aftermarket heads?


not knocking aftermarket heads, i'd love to have a set of AFR competition port 165's for the long rod, roller block 351w i plan on building before long but they are around 1800 bucks and i can redo the set of D0OE 351 heads i already have for about 1/3 of that and still have very good performing heads, albeit not as good as the AFR's but still very nice flowing heads.

bnickel said:

one thing that always gets me when people talk about spending big bucks on aftermarket heads they always say stuff like and with the valve job, guides, etc. you are only X dollars away from a good set of aftermarket heads, when eventually those aftermarket heads are going to need all that stuff too. so what do you do when it's time for those aftermarket heads to have a valve job, etc.? buy another set of aftermarket heads?


not knocking aftermarket heads, i'd love to have a set of AFR competition port 165's for the long rod, roller block 351w i plan on building before long but they are around 1800 bucks and i can redo the set of D0OE 351 heads i already have for about 1/3 of that and still have very good performing heads, albeit not as good as the AFR's but still very nice flowing heads.

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That's exactly what I'm trying to say. The gaskets are a wash, you'll need them for aluminum heads as well. I've never met Les either, he's not 'my guy', I'm just saying people have used him and been very pleased with the results. If you already have a set of iron heads, you can still go all out on a port job and have less money in them than a unassembled set of aluminum heads that have no port work done to them at all. Are you throwing good money after bad? It depends on what your desired outcome is. There are guys that always want to go faster and there are guys that want to do it once and enjoy it. washmo66 is a good example. His engine is getting him into the low 11's, but he wants to go faster, so instead of upgrading this and that, he's building a new engine that matches all the parts. People think you can just throw a set of heads on something and run tons better, an engine is a balancing act of parts, you know that Craig.

My race 289 was a perfect example, 351w heads, Offy 360 Tunnel Ram with a pair of 660 center squirters, solid roller cam (not that big), Howards aluminum rods and TRW 12.7:1 pistons (with 56-58cc 289 heads, not with 62-64cc 351w heads, maybe 11.5:1). Yeah, that's 1320 cfm carb capability on a .060" over 289 that wasn't grouted, no stud girdle or crank scraper, used a '65 289 cast crank and a windage tray. People that had raced for some time couldn't believe how well that little engine ran, it didn't sound like a SBF, it sounded more like a Cleveland, people accused me of having a 351w (no rib next to the distributor) or it being a stroker (347?!? ) or having a nitrous setup on it .

I asked my chassis buddy and my other buddy whom I had went in partners with on the setup (he had the car, an R-code Mach I with no engine, I had a engine with no car prepped properly for it) about how fast they thought it would go. The chassis guy had always had FE's, but knew quite a bit about the SBF setups that he had done chassis work on and the other buddy used to run SBF powered Falcons (he now has a 8.30's tube chassis '64 Falcon) and they both figured 13.50's. First pass ever cracked off a 12.51 and it had spun off the line as it had bounced all 4 tires off the ground at the launch (it had SSM bars on the rear).

Plus most aftermarket assembled heads need to be disassembled and checked, Edelbrocks most notably. On a serious engine, I would buy unassembled heads and have my builder do them up right. Didja look at his current combo? Didja look at what he plans to do? About the only thing he can use from his current combo is the block, and if he bought the AFR's, the heads. Now, when he takes his engine out to go 393, he can't enjoy the car, we all know things tend to take longer than we plan. I still suggest sending the heads off, spend a couple hundred on them and find another block and save the aluminum heads for that. That way he can continue to enjoy the car. If he gets AFR's for the 351w, he shouldn't have any work done to them as he doesn't have that much of a current setup, big, high flowing heads ain't gonna help that combo and may hurt it. So he'd have to have work done later to match up to the 393. He can sell off the complete and running 351w after his 393 is done, or put it into another toy he has aquired (washmo66 is taking about putting his low 11 second 347 into a '65 4 door Comet, talk about sleeper. ).

All I'm saying is, look at the big picture. Putting money into iron heads is not really a loss, incidently, my 289 was built in '85, the only aluminum heads then were rare Gurney-Eagle or Gurney-Westlake heads which required the matching intake. I had a chance at a set back then, a steal at $3500 (which is like $6000 in today's money), but your only other choices were the '69-'70 351w heads or a pair of Cleveland heads and a TrackBoss intake conversion. This is the perfect application to port a set of iron heads and granted, they don't need full port work done. Open up the exhaust a bit & polish, pocket port behind the valves, match the intake openings to the heads and go on down the road. Scott Vincent is another guy that ports heads and his prices are inline with Les's and Scott is in Kentucky if I recall correctly.

Here's a table that will either confuse the heck out of you, or intrigue you for hours. It's not all inclusive nor does it have every example or situation shown but it's a decent go-by. http://users.erols.com/srweiss/tablehdc.htm And another, http://www.jason.fletcher.net/tech/flowdata/castiron.htm

Yeah, but it's not 1985 anymore! I was around then, unless you had a zillion dollars, you HAD to take the stock pieces and make them work. I know a guy who does VARA spec vintage racing with an early Mustang who has to use stock 289 blocks and heads (they tech this stuff) and he makes over 500 hp with the stock pieces. He HAS to make it work. He told me he had enough money tied up in those cylinder heads to buy new castings 5x over, but he doesn't have a choice if he wants to be competitive with the class rules.

In 2006, for not much money, OP can build a way better cylinder head combo.

I rebuilt a set of 289 heads in 1986. When I rebuilt them, they were the best castings of the six sets, with good guides and good seats. None of the valves I had were usable after I cut them, so I would up buying all sixteen.

Drove them about 60,000 miles, and lunched a piston. I pulled the heads off and set them in the corner of the shop for the better part of a decade when I bought a used long block and just installed it. When I took them off, I noticed I had a burned valve in one hole.

My brother wound up with them and took them apart. All the seats needed to be replaced, and the exhaust valves were all trashed (too thin to reuse). Blame unleaded gas here in California and soft OE valves.

The E7 heads my brother wound up with needed seals and a easy valve job, cleaned right up. Somewhere along the line Ford made the seats a bunch harder, because we couldn't do the seats with the stones we had (which worked fine on the early heads) and we wound up sending the pieces out to a local machine shop that had the right cutters.

They ran fine right up to the point where some non driving person blew a stop light and wrote off my brothers coupe. Owell.

Why can't OP just leave his setup alone and save the pennies for the stroker motor he wants to build? Why do the engine twice?

Push comes to shove, when you put money in a factory cast head, it's money you're not putting into a casting with 40 years better technology. Consider that new RPMs can be had for about $1100, and that Edelbrocks really don't need to be dissassembled anymore, and the fact that you get all new valves, springs, keepers, screw-in studs, and flow that would equal at least $350 worth of porting, it just makes sense to buy new heads.

Look at the article at Fordmuscle.com about making molds from head intake and exhaust ports, and look at the example of RPM heads vs stock 429 heads. The difference is night and day, and 429 heads were perceived as great flowing heads back in the day.

This is 2007, and great heads are available for reasonable prices. You don't have to buy AFRs to get decent heads. Unless you are racing in a stock class, are showing the car where originality means points, or getting a killer deal on porting, there is no reason to even bother with stock heads, IMO.

YMMV.

bnickel said:

one thing that always gets me when people talk about spending big bucks on aftermarket heads they always say stuff like and with the valve job, guides, etc. you are only X dollars away from a good set of aftermarket heads, when eventually those aftermarket heads are going to need all that stuff too. so what do you do when it's time for those aftermarket heads to have a valve job, etc.? buy another set of aftermarket heads?.

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When my dad was a line mechanic at Ford in 1966, you couldn't get a car to go 30,000 miles and not need a valve job. In the five years I've called on the Ford dealer in my route, I've seen them do a valve job exactly ONCE - on a car that had overheated at 170,000 miles or so. Short of that, the seats and valves now are much harder than the ones then and you just don't do them anymore. All the aftermarket stuff is pretty much the same quality.

Things change, castings are better because computer modeling is cheap now, and the materials and quality control is better for the parts we are talking about than any chassis you can wrap around it.

Whoever said that they'd buy the heads bare and build them up themselves, I agree. They use stock valvesprings and if you plan on using the car hard they just aren't up to snuff.

You're right, it's not 1985, but to put money into a set of AFR's twice isn't that great of an investment either. Let's just agree to disagree and go on. I said buy the heads bare and build them and Afterglow's question was whether or not he should have his head and manifold ported, not should I go out and buy aluminum heads and put them on this engine now. BTW, I only had about $400 more in my whole engine than you'd have in a new set of aluminum heads, yup bought it used but never ran, it had sat for 10 years, there are deals out there, sold the iron heads for $250 to a guy that was estatic to get them. Would I buy used aluminum heads? If I knew the seller or the car, I don't want someone's overheated problem. My FE will get aluminum heads, one because of weight, two because the rules allow it and three, because HR iron heads are the same money or more and the aluminum HR heads actually have a MR port in the HR location. Why don't I go 385 or SBF as they're cheaper? Not allowed by the rules, must be an FE. The car will be built to run 8.50 although I'll likely never go faster than 9.90's, why? Because it's easier to spend a little more now than a lot later if I decide to go faster. A F/C cage will ba all that keeps it from 7.50s and that's just because I don't want it in there as it would spoil the nostalgic look of the car, even though it's safer.

1320stang said:

(washmo66 is taking about putting his low 11 second 347 into a '65 4 door Comet, talk about sleeper. ).

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ixsna on the cometska......


MBA - Don't take what 1320 says as an attack, think of it more as a rite of passage into the club.... Larry beat me up over fabricating some stinkin radiator mounts back in the day and I still suffer some post tramatic Stangnet abuse trauma sometimes.....

:SNSign:

Crap, does this mean I'm going to have another friend? LOL!!

Err, I meant '65 Galaxie Station wagon, uh yeah, with woodgrained sides and surfboards on the top....... and it was a 200 straight six with a one barrel carb that only runs on 5 cylinders....