V6 Head Porting

[greenfoam]

I thought it would be about the right time to start this thread. Alot of guys seem interested and it's the only way you are ever going to get some proper pace out of the V6. So here you go post away!

[hakhawk]

http://www.sa-motorsports.com/diyport.shtm
http://www.chevyhiperformance.com/techarticles/95518/
http://www.ws6transam.org/ported.html

few good ones.

[CSL]

see i was led to beleive that you need to machine port them, pref CNC as the ports all ahve to be exactly the same, yet i have known a few people to get the die grinder onto some heads and with a vernier in hand do it themselfs to a decent amount of accruacy, but you dont want some cylinders runing lean mroe than others,
good thread thou foamie

[hakhawk]

nothing wrong with helping out the diy guys, im gonna be having a play.but with a spare set of heads of course.

CNC machining would obviously be the best way ot go about it, but some people cant afford that and some just want to give it a go themselves.

[greenfoam]

I think you will find all good heads are hand ported, some companys who mass produce heads cnc them but they still need hand porting later to get maximum flow, you can use templates made of say and ice cream containers lids to get all the ports the same once you have decided how you want them and even take latex moulds of the ports to messure the volume of them if you really want to. I spent a long time porting some small block chev heads once and I dont think I could have done it without hand tools, the right shape takes quite a while to get. I wouldn't be so fussy on the V6.

You will find most head porters think they are the stuff and also like to tell you no one else can do it right. But really it's pretty basic to get it 90% right , a good book, look at lots of pictures "become one with the air" a few carbide bits and a grinder and you are set. How to Build and Modify Chevrolet Small-Block V-8 Cylinder Heads by David Vizard is a great book, about chevs sure but the buick ports aren't too different

[Full Spectrum]

So what would be the price for the non mechanic minded person
And what type of gains come from it on a V6 Buick?

[VN Commy]

I thought it would be about the right time to start this thread. Alot of guys seem interested and it's the only way you are ever going to get some proper pace out of the V6. So here you go post away!

Good Stuff. I've been very interested in this for a while. It's a project I'd like to take on and I'm hoping I'll have enough skill to get some gains. Just a few things on the car that I have to take care of before I buy a second hand set of heads and have a crack. One thing I wanted to ask was what's the story with the valves? Do you widen the whole length and buy new valves or just kind of smoothen up the opening? I hear that there are some valves you can pick up for cheap that are shaped differently that would also give small gains.

[VN Commy]

Oh and at the same time I was thinking about having someone machine the heads to increase the compression ratio. Is this a good idea or should I just leave it? Sorry kinda off topic...

[PaRaDoX]

*sigh* after starting my own porting thread after i couldnt find the one that hakhawk said... but i was looking on Street commodores... oh well

looks good foam im gonna try it with the spare set of heads i have

just a question, what should you use for grinding the die,
my mate said you can use a drill with attachment or would it be worth while purchasing the tools
if so how much do they cost??

anyone know how much it costs to get a flow test done???

[greenfoam]

Ok for tools most importantly you need a carbide cutter. Hakhawk can hook you up with a dude that sells them cheap on ebay.

And you need a die grinder, you can use any kind of cheap air powered grinder that you find in the local hardware shop or places like supercheap or ebay, they only cost liek 40 to 60 bucks. But I'll show you one that I would suggest is what you want to start with

http://secure.global.net.au/otcgi-bi...:10:C:WQ08106N

I would HIGHLY reccomend you get a long nose one like that, if you don't get a long nose one you will soon wish you did when you just can't quite reach that one last spot you want to grind.

If you wanted to be the biggest porting pro ever you would just get an electric grinder like this one, it's good one that Makita make

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/MAKITA-8mm-Di...QQcmdZViewItem

Or you could try out this cheapy also on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/520WATTS-Die-...QQcmdZViewItem

It doesn't look like it would have much reach to go deep into runners without a crazy long carbide bit on it but yeah maybe the cheap electric one and the long nose air one. You don't really need to cut the runners unless you are going for pro stock style power anyway. So if you don't have a compressor the decision is easy, just get a grunty electric one

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Tungsten-and-...QQcmdZViewItem

This is the kind of bit you will need for Iron, you get a different one for Alloys. They are like 30 or 40 bucks in the shops but can be had for cheap on ebay, you can also get sanding wheels made of folded sand paper in all different grits to finish the job like the one mounted on the Makita grinder and also grinding stones but between the carbide bits and sanding wheels you will have most of the action covered.

Forget the drill that's too home brand even for me

SUPER IMPORTANT, wear a breathing mask and safety goggles when grinding metal, sharp little shards go all over the place!

[Wesleyrpg]

so greeny, hows my heads coming? now that im workin, i just dont have the time to do it myself!

[VN Commy]

Are the Standard Abrasives kits good for the job? Anyone ever tried one?

[PaRaDoX]

any use increasing the port size from the intake manifold to the heads????

was looking at the heads today thinking they could be a bit bigger

[hakhawk]

match the intake ports and intake manifold ports to a gasket. i think wider can be ok, open up the top of ports but try not to do anything with base except cleaning off crap bits.

i think!!

[greenfoam]

any use increasing the port size from the intake manifold to the heads????

was looking at the heads today thinking they could be a bit bigger

You can match them, and they are (roughly) on my old VN, but it's easy to bugger up and make them bigger than the head ports, this is way worse than them being smaller because they they had an edge to hit. When you are porting the most important areas are the "bowl" area right under the valve and the valve itself, The area under the valves are machined in the factory and it's only a rush job and of course there is no hand finishing in a average joe GM engine, (no Ferrari spec stuff going on there) so you should find a nice ridge in the cast where it's been machined, these are the kind of thing you look for and fix. You need to get those right before you need to worry about the rest of the runner.

I'm talking about this ridge below


Now I will take my magic grinder (paint program) and be from my mouse porting in a moment

Ok here it is, ace porting spec



Hakhawk nicely pointed out to me that my gimping skillz suck because it looks like the port got smaller, but I was just cloning the nice machined surface cause that's how it should look like of course in real life the machined part will be ground down to the level of the bottom of the bowl, infact that exhaust port could be a bit better, let me try that again.

Still not able to draw it how I would like but if you guys have cameras and can post pics of your ports you should be able to help each other get an idea ohhh the internet is so usefull !

[greenfoam]

Ok I just realised Sammy has some picts of Buick ports on his site so I stole them I'll write some more about these tomorrow but here's a picture of stock and roughly what you are trying to do, there are some areas you want to take more out than others and needs talking about but that's for tomorrow

Stock Ports


Ported ports


With the metal around the Valve boss lump you want that to be a kinda pyramid shape so it's still strong with a few mil all around the valve stem, hard to draw but I hope you get the idea

[Sammy]

man if your going to use my pics atleast leave them at the same resolution so you can actually see the difference in the ported one

[VN Commy]

So where the flat surface that I marked in the photo is, has that been re-ground so that it is now further away than it used to be? In order to smoothen out the whole area? In the photos it doesn't look like it but I don't understand how to smoothen it out without.. I'm trying to picture this all in my mind, I've got some heads comming (hopefuly soon) that I'll be able to have a look at.

[Sammy]

i'll take some more pics of this head with some more light in the ports and see if i can't get a better picture for you so you can see the before and after differences!

[cracker]

i did something simular to my heads about a year ago cant say if it worked or not because they went on a built motor very interesting

[Sammy]

they would have to have made atleast some increase in performance

[PaRaDoX]

telling your mates to get out and walk home can also boost the performance of the car.... -300kg lol

[Sammy]

that all depends on the size of your mates, head work is there all the time

anyways back on topic hehe ...

this first picture as you can see is of the stock VN V6 inlet port before any porting was done.


then this one is with only some mild porting around the valve boss area, you can go further with this if you like, depends on the effort you wish to put in.


its a similar deal with the exhaust port but its a slightly different design - stock though still.


its not a huge difference here but the angle difference after porting will make all the difference in the exhaust compared to the inlet port because the air coming out would run straight into the valve boss, whereas in the inlet port it still runs past the valve boss, just that the valve boss takes up more room.


and here we have a stock port with stock valve boss area ...


now an enlarged and tidied up port with the valve boss cleaned up abit aswell.


stock inlet port on the left and the other two are in various stages of porting complettion.


and similarly with the exhaust ports, the left hand port has been done and the other two are stock.

[PaRaDoX]

nice man, picked up my heads today, 200,000km..... thats 70,000km less than my current ones i couldnt believe how light the inlet manifold is... the heads are heavy bastards but i knew that already, any easy way to remove valves, how much do valve spring compressors cost???

[cracker]

interesting, how does the 2nd last picute work though by inlarging the port u are just creating a slitght wider area? instead of one constant width i cant see this helping flow, all looks very good though im impressed, how do you know what ur doing just guessing or do you know that this works?