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NEW HEADS: PORTING
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I gave a general overview of porting on the last page and showed you the old heads and how they bit the dust� so I again applied the same techniques, but took the porting a bit further!

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The plans
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Well I had wondered if simply gasket match porting had really been enough for the car. I never saw any appreciable gains from my simple gasket match port of the intake, runners, & heads. Then you factor in the larger Truleo intake, its a whole new ball of wax. There is considerable more airflow coming thru the heads and lower intake now. Were they ported enough to handle the flow, or have they just a bottle neck all along? Well I was guessing GM had set up all the components to be optimal together in stock form. This would then lead one to believe introducing something with much higher flow characteristic would require the same enlargement of the rest of the intake and exhaust track to take FULL advantage of it.

Now you will be noticing that the bump in the intake gets considerable skinnier as the porting was progressing. With my old heads, I had not done much to the bump in the intake port. I was told this helped direct and control airflow and that you did not want to remove it. Those people that had removed the bump in the past noticed poorer performance. So the plan was to instead shark fin the bump. It would still provide air direction toward the valve. If smaller, it would allow for more air and fuel volume. With the larger injectors and the larger intake my car was definitely pushing more air and fuel then stock!!

There has not been much testing in this area, so honestly we are just making an educated guess. The fact that there is NO aftermarket replacement heads makes the whole thing hard, not even an aluminum stock replacement. The only option is to port your stock iron heads yourself, or buy Super Six's heads, which are stock iron heads they port! Even super six, to my knowledge, has not done any published bench flow testing past their Stage II heads! (if you know of anyone who has, please let me know) The plan was to go further then super six's stage II heads, but who knows what the result will be! Guess we will try it and see!

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New heads
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So as you know from the previous page, I could not just tweak my existing gasket match ported heads since they were cracked! Yep, I had to start over with new ones! Fortunately, we had a donor 2.8 out of Joe's Fiero. So it was off to yank them and pray they were ok! They seemed fine, no obvious signs of a blow gasket or possible cracking. But wow, were they gunked up!

Here were the ports...
Intake...

Exhaust...

These were going to need some work! So off they went to Kyle to be tanked and cleaned up!
***Pics of them cleaned up and tanked can be found on the previous page�***

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Marking where to cut
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First thing I had to do was start with the gaskets to see how much material I had to remove to simply gasket match port them. Once this was done I could figure how much further I wanted to go!

I took a sharpie and traced around the gasket to mark the surface that had to be removed!

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Time to start porting
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I then had to sit down and port these guys! So out came the dremel with the carbide cutter...

None of this has to be perfect as I was just roughing in the new port walls... I will go back with finer tools to clean things up and even out the surface.

Starting to clean up the combustion chamber. again have to b careful not to hit the valve sealing surface. Best to do this with a junk set of valves in!

Exhaust ports were opened up a bit. There is a reason they are smaller though then your manifold/header openings, so don't go crazy on them. My headers were considerably larger, so I simply ported them to the gasket size. The headers are still larger again then the gasket!

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Feathering the new port openings into the port walls...
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Now I had to feather the new larger openings into walls of the intake port for a smooth transition.


I did the same for the exhaust.

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Time to go that one step further!
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Now that I had a true gasket match port, it was time to up the size of the ports. I marked on the intake how much further I wanted to go and made sure there was enough material in the gasket to trim it and still get a good seal. Once I was satisfied, I began carving again!

With this newest enlarging, I also had to further feather into the ports to keep things smooth. The big difference was now I had this huge opening necking down into a small inner port. So I feathered further in and removed even more material all the way in, to the valve bowl.

I took out whatever lumps, bumps, ridges, & casting numbers I could w/o going thru the ports into a coolant passage. Fortunately, I had my old set of heads to go back and use as a reference.

In one of the exhaust passages there was a very large lump I thought might go thru if I removed it, so I ground on the old set and found there to be plenty of material!

Once I got it all roughed in with the carbide cutter, I switched to a grinding stone to remove the casting material. The cutter took out too much and it was hard to get a even flat surface with it. I worked with both the larger stone and well as the smaller tapered end stone to be sure I could get in all the nooks & crannies. Then front there I moved to the sanding drums. I had both the large and small sizes to get in where I could.

Halfway there, one head done...
Here is the one that I have ported sitting next to the stock one that is unported to this point. Believe it or not, after this picture I still tweaked this head a bit more!

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17+ Hours later...DONE
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I worked solid for 4 days after work... �17+ hours� I put in on the heads over those days to get the port job done!

Let's follow the airflow thru them...
The intake ports

More pics of the new shark finned bump...

Now headed into the intake...


Now the same area just taken from the valve side...

Out to the cumbustion chamber

Now moving out the exhaust thru the valve bowl...

Then the exhaust ports...

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Comparisons
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Ok seeing everything in stages makes it a bit hard to truely see the larger changes that occured. So to make the difference even more obvious I have picked out pics w/ similar angles showing the differences from start to finish! Again following the air path thru the heads!

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Intake port
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Straight off the Fiero...

Here is the stock set of heads cleaned...

Now my old gasket match ported set...

Finally the new extreme ported heads...

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Inner intake track
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Stock

Ported

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Intake Valve Bowl
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Stock

Ported

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Combustion Chamber
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Sraight off Fiero

Cleaned stock head

Gasket match ported

Extreme ported... (this was polished up the same amount as the gasket match set above)

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Exhaust Valve Bowl
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Inner Exhaust Track
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Exhaust port
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Straight off Fiero

Stock cleaned up

Gasket matched ported

Extreme ported

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Exhaust Lump
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Stock

Ported

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Exhaust port
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Stock

Ported

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HOME PAGE

Follow this link to additional information on the car not found on this site!
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DIRECTORY FOR RAIF'S ENGINE PERFORMANCE SITE
01 Site Overview
02 Most Current Dyno and Track run
03 Early Cold Air Induction System
04 2001 Modifications
05 2001 Track Times
06 2002 Modifications
07 2002 Dyno & Track Times
08 2002 Fall Modifications
09 2002 Fall Dyno & Track Times
10 2003 Distributor rebuild
11 2003 Transgo Shift Kit & Stall Converter
12 2003 May Dyno
13 2003 3.4L Engine Swap
14 2003 3.73 Disc Rearend Swap
15 2003 December Dyno
16 2004 Cutout & PF&E Headers
17 2004 Dyno
18 2004 / 2005 Transmission
19 2005 3in Mandrel Bent Exhaust & Dyno Results
20 2005 Truleo Intake, 65mm Ford Throttle body, Stock, & Disassembly Pictures
21 2005 Truleo Intake, Ford TB, & Fuel Rail Installation
22 2005 Truleo Intake & Ford TB Vacuum Line Routing
23 2005 Truleo Intake & Ford TB Custom Linkage Installation
24 2006 MSD Box & New fuel Pump
25 2006 Old Heads: Gasket Match Ported, & General Porting Information
26 2006 New Heads: Extreme Porting <<<
27 2006 New Heads: Multiangle Valve Job, 1.6 Roller Tip Rockers, Beefier Valve springs
28 2006 Lower Runner (Intake Base) Gasket Match Porting
29 2006 Extreme Lower Runner (Intake Base) Porting
30 2006 Dyno Results: Truleo & New Head Combo
31 Future Plans

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