anybody got goods tips on P and P my own Fe heads??

 

Moved -Try the experts in the FE forum.

 

The resident porter's and polisher's are around here somewhere!!

I leave itup to the experts...I'am afraid to screw up a perfectly good head!! LOL..

But some of the guys in here do it!! and there motor's run...

RJ

 

Not that hard at all if you just want a mild clean up. It made a sizable difference in my old turd. If your looking to port it for racing, might wanna let a prof hog them to the rim. All that is need is a die grinder and a burr. Mine was a 2.25" burr, die grinder was 9.00 at Harbor Freight.. took better part of 9 hrs to do and could have been much better I'm sure. See my gallery for a pict of 9 hrs worth... BOL

 

Redmanbob, those heads look real good actually.

QFT. If you get too enthusiastic, you can actually hurt flow if you do it wrong.

Here's what I like to do:
1. Sand off the casting roughness in the intake ports, take 'em to 80 grit and no more. The reason is that they have to be a *little* rough to promote fuel atomization.

2. Smooth up the short side radius. Lots of flow to be had there. Might even increase the radius a bit (round it off a bit more), but not too much.

3. Clean up the bowls, and area directly below the valve. Everything needs to be nice and smooth, and rounded off here. Be careful though to not significantly affect the venturi below the valve, or low lift flow could be decreased.

4. Remove the emissions bump on the roof of the exhaust ports, near the back. Blend the area into the rest of the port. It was originally put there for air injection IIRC, and since you're most likely not going to be using that, get rid of the bump in the port for it.

5. Polish the exhaust ports. The shinier the better.

I also like to polish the combustion chambers. Not really necessary, but it reduces carbon buildup, eliminates hot spots that can lead to pinging, reflects heat back into the chamber for increased efficiency, and slightly reduces surface area available for heat to transfer to the head, since a smooth surface has less surface area than a bumpy one. I also have a theory that it may help air to flow into the chamber. Plus, it looks nice!

There should be a slight ridge right after the valve seat on the chamber side; leave that there. It promotes fuel atomization.

Edit: Do all this before a valve seat job. This way if you accidentally nick a valve seat it wont matter as much.

 

Make sure to were some coverall or long sleeve shirt.
Wear some safety glasses, dust respirator, and full face grinding mask.
There will be metal flying all over the place, might want to cover items you don't want getting metal shaving on.

I used some work benches to place work piece on, here are some pictures with any where for 0 hour to 14 hours of work, but you can get the concept of the work involved.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/user_gal...&albumid=24688

I spent about 20 hours. But didn't get any pictures on the Final completed p and p project,

 

D. Vizard's book "how to build and modify chevy small block cylinder heads" has some excellent information on do-it-yourself porting. I recommend reading and absorbing what is discussed in his book.
A good flowing set of cylinder heads will provide more torque and H.P. improvement than a camshaft change.

 

Bob Sprowl from the net54 forum has a website. On there he's cut apart a few old FE heads to show exactly what's what. I think they are C6-R's and they were badly damaged before he cut them! I'll look for the link. It's a pretty cool site and has some good intake and header/exhaust pics besides! Anyway that might be a good place to compare and to see what your dealing with.

G.

 

try this http://home.bellsouth.net/p/s/community.dll?ep=16&groupid=51291&ck=

hope it works.....

G.

 

Bobs got some pretty good reading in there G !!

RJ

 

Hey bud where you been this am??? Sleep late??? LOL

Yea good site that Bob has!!

G.

 

Yeah I didnt get until 6am this morning,,trued to sleep off a hangover!! Was over at the cuz's house yesterday Beer drinkin and watching the Drags on the big screen!! LOL.

One of these days I'll get my big dish hooked back up!! LOL

RJ, taking asprin and getting some more coffee!!

 

Another thing, is you're not going to want to take any off the floor. the only thing you want to do to the floor is take out any casting flash, and smooth it out, and like someone earlier said, make the short turn(the curve where the floor of the port meets the valve seat) a little less sharp, so it's not an aburubt turn, but DO NOT get carried away, just do a little. Another way to gain alot is if you're looked into the port down through from the combustion chamber into the round hole where the vlave is, you see the vlave guide down in there. you'll notice that it's as if there are 2 troughs or gully like sections to the right and the left or the guide, that a finger can't even reach the bottom. well a tight trough like that hurts flow. make those gullies go from a tight "V" like shape, to a muss less sharp "U", or even better if the tops of that "U" go outwards!. you can also gasket match. on the exhaust side though, make the port on the head slightly smaller than the port on the headers. on the Intake you can make them the same. On the Combustion chamber put the head on the motor, and put your hand through the cylinder bore, and trace EXACTLY where the edges of the bore is compared to the head. now where the curve of the Combustion chamber is close to the cylinder bore curve, you can cut away right to that line you scribed. If you use Dykem Die, or a marker, and scribe though the die, the lines will show up, and be real easy to see.

Also, on the bottom of exhaust port, on the inside of the turn, there is a raised section, you can take some of that out, but not more than an 1/8" or so, and try to take a good bit out of the roof of the exhaust port. you can feel w/ your fingers how thick is is, because the other side isn't water, it's the outside of the head!, if you have any question, and have a couple FE heads cut up. some C8AE's, and a D2TE's.....even thought they are the same!...lol

 

GREAT thread guys!

Rate this thread! Upper right corner just above the first post.

 

By the way, I have no idea what the transducer looks like on a bore sonic tester, but is it possible to adapt that technology to intake/exhaust runners so you know how much meat you have left?