has anyone had a go at porting standard headers and up pipe i know harvey does it but was thinking of having a go my self

any advice guys

 

Cleaning up the manifold ports will definately help to aid gas flow, start with a grinding stone on a dremel and remove any rough edges and mildy increase the port diameters. But not too much and definately not as far as the gasket inner ring as this will decrease gas velocity and negatively effect turbo spool up. The surface finish can then be finished of with a fine sand paper by hand or a dremel and lastly a rubber wheel attachment. A polished finished isn't essential as the surface will quickly be covered in carbon deposits.

 

thanks anyone got any pics of headers that have been ported then i get an idea of what the difference is thanks

 

I'll try and get some up later when I'm home..

 

Do you port headers by taking piece of paper an pencil an stenciling the exhaust ports on the engine onto the paper then use the stencil as a guide to how much you should grind off the headers?

 

its an idea but i think most d.i.y porting is done to the gasket size

 

The best way to do them is to take the throats back to the soot ring, thus removing any steps down it the direction of flow.

Look at the image below, on the top set (untouched) you can clearly see the soot ring, which is the same as the gasket size:



Work in progress:



Cross over pipe is a little trickier as it's steel, but you can still improve things, from this:



To this:



Finally finished, wrapped ready for a coat of VHT paint to help seal the wrapping :



Hope this helps..

PS try and cut off the no longer required lugs that the OE heat shields bolted to.

PPS Be prepared for a lot of sooty crap from all the grinding..

 

cheers fella im going to have a go thanks for the pics

 

no point mate, as the port on the engine is actually the same size as the std manifold port.

 

It shouldn't be. The name of the game is to do no more than eliminate any lips in the direction of gas flow. Going out all the way to the soot ring is overkill, and removing too much material drops gas velocity and harms spool.

You can do a bit better than that if you have access to a welder. Cut off the "spare" pipe, fill the gap to the flange with weld, and then grind it back to match the mating port.

 

Ideally if I had a welder/welding skills when I did this that would have been the thing to do, but in the end I did make it a little better than the picture suggests, which was a lot better than it was..

Lol, I thought about using some filler, then I had visions of my turbine blades being trashed when I came loose..

The one thing that hasn't been done and I wish it had, is the up-pipe. I recon there's spooling gains to be had here, although this is a s/s decatted up-pipe, so the restriction might not be so bad as oe headers..?

 

Visions that would have undoubtedly come true, so the correct decision.

You can do the entry to the standard up-pipe the same way as mentioned before on the cross pipe, and while you can clean up the internal welds a little at the top there's not much more to do. Aftermarket ones should be tidier inside to start with.

If your aftermarket pipe is larger diameter than OE, chances are there's no lip at all!

 

cheers guys

 

if i port the standard up pipe what do i do with the standard steel insert that is in the end that the turbo bolts on to ,its about 2inch down the pipe and is smaller bore i take it i just leave this as it is .

any one got pics of a ported up pipe

thanks

 

If you mean what I think you're do, it's not an "insert", it's the end of the lower half of the pipe inside the flexi-joint, and yes, if that's the case just leave as is.

Short of doing the weld in/grind back process on the mouth of the standard up-pipe, there isn't much you can really do short of flattening the interior of the tubes where the flange welding has made them bulge.

 

yep thats what i mean thanks mate

game on ha ha