- Alright.
Hello I'm Davin Reckow with Hagerty,
and in today's DIY
we're gonna go through porting a set of cylinder heads.
(burr rubbling)
Okay for porting this cylinder head
a couple of fairly simple tools,
but might not be in everybody's toolbox.
So I have a set of carbide double cut burrs.
I have a good, happens to be an Ingersoll Rand,
but I have a good dye grinder,
a long extended burr,
flashlight, tool for the dye grinder,
the intake valve and the exhaust valve.
And then I also have some dye cam,
some valve lapping compound
and a lapping tool.
An alternative tool to a dye grinder
and a compressor and so and so forth
would be a simple dremel tool,
that would use a burr as well.
The unfortunate part about those dremel tools
is the burrs will not be quite as large.
So it will just take you longer,
but you can still do the function it's not a problem.
So importing your cylinder heads
there's two ways to look at things.
The DIY standpoint,
where I'm gonna gain 30, 40% of the flow
in these heads over the stock versions,
opposed to a hundred percent
that I can get by taking them to a shop
and dropping $2,500 or more or slightly less.
So the idea is for a little time,
some fairly common tools,
you can gain some good performance
in a matter of few hours in your own shop and
be better than the guy with a stock setup.
Okay so simple enough,
an engine is an air pump.
So air in and air out to make power.
To do that you wanna smooth the flow from the intake valve
into the combustion chamber
and then of course out of the exhaust.
So simple areas to make improvements
are in what they call in the backside porting
or the backside of the valve.
So that'd be down in here.
So camera wise you should be able to see
there's a little ridge in here.
These Pontiac heads aren't too bad,
but in some of the heads this is very pronounced.
Regardless what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a burr.
This happens to be a double carbide cutting burr
come in here with a dye grinder
and we're just gonna take that edge out
and smooth things out.
Now the other side is,
is port matching what you would do as on the intake runners,
you'd take the gasket lay that over here,
dye cam out and trace it.
And then your gasket will typically be
a slightly larger than the
in the cast iron runner.
And you basically open that up
but you bring it back into the,
in here so it's nice and smooth.
Now on this Pontiac head,
I am not going to do that
because as you can see in here that's very tight.
As far as the push rod area,
the push rod boss,
and I don't want to cut into that push rod boss
and cause a vacuum leak inside the engine.
So I'm just gonna stay away from that side of things.
Now caution you do not wanna get
extremely aggressive on how much material you remove,
cause if you cut into the water jackets, that's a problem.
If you cut into the intake,
flow from another side that's also a problem.
So be conservative in what you're cutting,
unless you really know the heads that you're working with,
but you can gain a ton of performance with just a little bit
of massaging to them with the burr.
Alright so my first step
is I'm gonna take some dye cam machinist dye.
And am gonna coat the daylights out of this whole chamber
and the main reason is so I can take the valve,
put it inside with some lapping compound,
and then I can clearly see
where my seiling surfaces from my valves.
And then as I use the grinder
and that blue is worn away or cut away,
I can easily see where I'm at
because I do not want my burr to hit this seiling surface.
So a little dye cam.
And if you've never used this before,
it has a nice smell to it and
it dries up it dries the touch quickly.
And if you need to wipe it off, it wipes off
with some brake clean
or you can just leave it.
All right so I'm gonna take my intake valve,
put a little grinding compound on it
and I wouldn't need to coat all the way round,
but we'll make sure we cover it.
And all this is going to do
is it's gonna take some of that blue back off
so we can clearly see where the seiling surfaces at.
(valve lapping)
and wonder if you're doing this a lot,
this is what they would call lapping in a valve
if you do it much longer.
All right so now the valve out
you can see that the silver band here,
this is where the valve seals into the seat.
So it was, I come in here with this cutter
i gotta fair amount of leeway even down in this bottom edge,
to clean out this edge of the casting to the seat,
I'm just gonna smooth out to it.
I'm probably gonna leave
just a little bit of a hole right there.
Cause I don't wanna get too far up in here and get,
I don't need to get that excited about it.
So for instance, as we get cutting this lip right here,
I'm gonna pull this out and come back.
And on the exhaust side,
you can see there's a huge ridge right here,
which will adversely affect the flow
as that combustion chamber empties.
So I'm gonna start by using this
Christmas tree shaped cutting burr.
And I find that I can do most of the
work that I'm after with that but,
I like to regulate my speed.
You can also regulate your air pressure right at the wall.
(burr rubbling)
So you can see it's already starting to
take shape pretty quickly.
This does do damage awful fast
so you have to be careful.
You notice I'm moving it nice and easy.
I'm not putting a bunch of pressure on it,
let the tool do the work
and just keep floating across that surface.
And all I'm trying to do is smooth this out so it's a nice,
a nice shape, smooth think of the airflow
coming from this side, flowing through,
just eliminating all the ridges.
(burr rubbling)
So I think with that camera angle you can see
now that is a straight shot through
up until the cylinder.
It doesn't have a hump to move around.
It's fairly smooth just with the carbide.
You can come in and polish it a little bit.
I wouldn't go more than 36 grit though with
on the intake side and
basically I'll need to go around the whole thing
do the short side a little bit as well.
And this port will clean up pretty nice.
(burr rubbling)
Now this port is definitely a lot smoother.
There's a better transition coming from the intake side
into the port chamber.
It could use a little bit more sanding.
I'll need to take a little bit of a sander and go in there,
but even with the cutting burr
it's very smooth comparatively to the as cast
of course now I need to go through and do the other seven.
All right so now the only difference
between the intake and the exhaust
is purely intake versus exhaust.
So your flow instead of coming from the carburetors
and flowing over the backside of the valve
and into the chamber
now you're going from the chamber out.
So just keep that in mind as you look at the port
and you're cleaning it up
to take ridges out going this way.
So for instance looking at this port
you at the top of the guide there's a ridge there.
I'm gonna just gently come in
and take that off and smooth it up.
And then as you look at it there's a big ridge right here
we're gonna work that back and try to even it out.
Because air will flow over a rounded surface
or slightly rounded surface
way better than a sharp edge.
It's just more consistent.
(burr rubbling).
Okay so from this side I have things fairly roughed in.
I'm gonna have to change my burr to get this real well.
I need something probably a little more
surely I'd probably use this and just glaze that edge
to blend it in.
And then to get on the top of this backside radius,
I can get some from the,
some of it from the bottom or the backside but
I think I can take this in here
being mindful that this is gonna seal up here.
So I don't wanna run even the flat edge of the burr
the shaft of the burr up on there
but I need to come in here and tip it up
and bring it about like that.
And just break that edge that's up there.
Now something to note
as the length of the shaft increases on the burr,
you wanna to reduce the speed
because the faster this slings,
this weight out here,
it'll start acting like a piece of spaghetti,
which is uncontrollable.
So you wanna run this a lot slower,
so you don't have that bounce and chatter
and just flat out can't control it.
(burr rubbling)
Something else to note with carbide burrs,
you will quickly separate the good
from the crappy, dye grinders
because I found that some of the dye grinders,
the very least expensive ones will,
are not balanced.
And they're actually not very smooth either.
So when you start getting a lot of chatter on a short bit,
it's probably because your grinder is not
well balanced or a very well-made one.
This is where a few extra dollars on the grinder is
by far well worth it.
So the difference between a $10 one and
this is only about a 60 or $70 one is huge.
Both in how you can control the speed
and the fact that it's not doing this all the time,
will make your job a whole lot better.
(burr rubbling)
Patience is certainly going to be a virtue here
at the end of the day
you'll probably have about an hour minimum
just in one chamber.
So yes, that's about eight hours
but it's also your time
opposed to paying somebody else's time
and you can gain some good performance,
not all of it, but good performance.
(burr rubbling)
And obviously I'm checking,
just reaching in and feeling with my finger,
feeling that transition,
you know like right now with the sanding roll,
I got this nice and smooth,
but there's still like a little ridge back here,
which I'll have to get with a little deeper burr.
And this is still pretty rough,
but I'll have to change to a smaller sanding roll
to get in this little bit of a dish right here,
I'm working on a Pontiac head.
There are multiple Pontiac heads,
all different chamber styles, different intake runners.
And then you get into a Chevy on a Ford and a Chrysler
so on and so forth.
They're all gonna be slightly different.
So I can't sit and tell you that this is gonna,
this exactly is how you do it on every other head.
You're gonna have to use your own common sense
and look at things and feel how it flows,
know how that chamber looks,
know what you're getting into as far as,
you know like a bolt hole and making sure you don't get in,
you know cut too much material.
But again if you stay conservative,
just take the casting edges off
will still be an improvement over what you had.
Okay so other than just cleaning up
the backside of the ports,
as I mentioned before you can go through
and you can open a port match,
the exhaust you can port match the intake side.
One of the other two areas I like to work on as well
is the aesthetic performance.
So from an aesthetic standpoint,
if I come in and I shaved the casting lines down,
it gives me a better surface for the paint to adhere
cause paint doesn't want to stay on a knife edge.
So performance wise aesthetically
the paint will stay on here.
It'll look nicer
it'll look nicer longer.
Secondly, on these Pontiac head specifically
in the intake, in the rocker valley,
this had a lot of casting flash.
So I took the opportunity with the grinder
since I had them off and completely bare
went through and I shaved all the casting flash off.
Now, does that improve power?
No, but what it will do is it'll avoid any loose casting
from falling into the engine
and going through your bearings
and your pump and causing all kinds of ugly.
Secondly, it will help relative to
depending on where it's at,
it'll help oil drain back,
and it's better to have oil out of the top of the head
and into the oil pan
where the oil pump can pick it up and put it right back,
but it drains back quicker
and overall your engine will be a lot happier.
Thanks for watching.
Hopefully you got some information
out of porting some cylinder heads.
By the way this particular head is gonna be on
our red line rebuild of a Pontiac engine.
You might wanna subscribe and if my editor doing
right over here,
then there should be something right here
to click on, subscribe, leave your comments
and until then have fun.
(laughing).
- [Narrator] Seriously like we gotta have fun(mumbles)
- Yeah.