I am going to do a little gasket matching, but prefer not to wear out bit real fast, one knowledgeable head porter used some type of grease on the bit, talked to one other guy he mentioned just put some oil, any kind on the part to be worked on. Wonder if any suggestions from more experienced folks .....

 

Most people use sanding drums instead of carbide burrs.

 

Any kind of light oil will work though you can buy oils specifically for this purpose.. search grinding/cutting oil, the oil will minimize bit clogging which is particularly bad when cutting aluminum.

Also note you really don't want to gasket match you want to port match. If for example you set your intake on the motor with the heads mounted you will find that some ports are misaligned towards the back and some towards the front so more material will have to come off one side vs the other. And the port may still end up being smaller than the gasket opening which is fine, if you create an area in the port that is larger than everywhere else that will create a low pressure zone that generates turbulance and disrupts airflow.. which can undo some or all of the gains your porting work is supposed to generate.

 

Sanding drums? No one wants to sand for weeks.

You'll sling the oil off the work area so fast that it's not even worth it.

Get some decent burrs and go to town, one burr will last many sets of heads without oil.

Also with what conanski said, leaving the intake slightly smaller than the exhaust creates a small lip that helps prevent intake air from pushing back into the intake.

 

As I've worked in a lot of machine shops across my years, I personally follow the philosophy that oil should never be used on any type of cutter! This includes all penetrating fluids!

Oil is designed to prevent metal to metal contact, Cutting Fluids are designed to induce metal to metal contact, cooling and chip displacement.

Did you know you can use Turpentine as a cutting fluid ...
In fact you can use Turpentine and a standard high speed steel cutter to cut stainless steel without burning up your cutter!

Don't believe me, Try it ... Use molders clay to make a dam around where you want to cut/drill a piece of stainless, fill the dam with Turpentine and cut/drill away ensuring the cutting edge stays completely immersed. Cutter speed is the enemy!

The same machinist that taught me the Turpentine trick also says any type of cleaning solvent is better then oil, including things like Windex.

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

Yup, sanding drums, they work great. Cheap ones work great too.


https://www.summitracing.com/search/...polishing-kits

 

Sanding drums work good for finish work, the grunt of the work is better done with a rotary burr.

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

I know what they are...I ported my first intake (lt1 days) with those, did in 30 hours what I could do in 1 with burrs but I didn't know any better.

 

Ok, thanks guys for weighing in. Looking forward to gettin er done. This will be hopefully a daily driver so I can take the F150 off the road and start workin on it .... the sad thing, this is a V-6 GM vortec that is about the same hp as the wimpy 5.0 - as it stands now .....

 

No shame, 4.3 is a venerable setup and ford is infamous for having abysmal sbf power numbers in stock trim.