How-To Port Match Your Head

Discussion in 'Mazdaspeed 6 How-To' started by Vansquish, Feb 27, 2020.

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  1. Vansquish

    Vansquish Greenie Member

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    This thread was originally created by @keefover on MSF back in April 2012:

    I have decided to port and polish my head. I purchased an industrial grade die grinder from eBay to achieve this task. The die grinder is a fucking gem!! Hell of a buy at 150.00. It is a vintage 1950's ish Precision Co. 40,000 RPM, 1/5 HP, 2.3 Amp, 120VAC, both 1/8 and 1/4 in collets, and a flex shaft. Flex shaft = Money.

    Warning.........

    I am not responsible for any of the aforementioned information. If you chose to use this method to accomplish a Port job on your head you are doing it at your own risk. I hereby denounce any civil liability......

    Now that we got that shit out of the way lets get to the meat and potatoes.

    Personal Experience Porting Heads: None (this is my first one)
    Precision measuring tools to be used to calculate flow: None
    I am doing this on a 150.00 budget. then I spent about 150.00 extra on long shank burrs, stones, and flap wheels from www.ruffstuff.com

    It is often stated that the use of an electric die grinder for porting jobs is not the preferred method. A lot of people will tell you that the stability is simply not even close in comparison to pnumaticaly actuated tools. In the opposition electric actuated tools have better TQ in the low RPM range then the pneumatic tools. It will also be advised by others not to use a flex shaft with a die grinder as Die hop will be present. I pretty much took all of these recommendations and wiped my ass with them.

    I started by placing an exhaust gasket on the exhaust manifold studs to determine how far out I wanted to go. I decided in this case to open up the ports all the way to the gasket. Holding the gasket in place with a couple pieces of tape, I used a black marker to trace the exhaust gasket port outline on to the head. As soon as this was achieved I removed the gasket. I would advise at this time to remove your valves from your head. Be sure when removing your cam buckets and valves you keep the same bucket with the valve and mark where you got them from. If you don't you will have to set up your valve lash and it is a pain in the ass. I will however recommend rechecking it upon installation to verify it is correct.

    Beings as my spring compressor is at the shop and I am not going to be grinding in the bowls or under the valves at this moment, I have left my valves in. Clean up for me will be achieved when I remove them.

    In doing this job I would recommend using an aggressive burr for the big stuff and then switching to a finer burr to clean it up, or even a stone for that matter and then finnish it with flap wheels. Be careful on selecting your stone composition (silicone stones work the best for aluminum) as aluminum likes to stick to these little bastards. The reason I chose to use such an aggressive burr at first is not just to reduce time, but also with a wider profile between the cutting edges there is less likelihood of the burr getting clogged with metal. Be sure to have a scribe on hand to clear the cutting edges on the burr.

    1.JPG
    Notice the black circles around the ports. This was the tracing process I described in the earlier paragraph.

    2.JPG
    Using just the Aggressive burr

    3.JPG
    First one is completed as far as the die grinder is concerned. You can see the finish cleared up with the use of the stone.

    4.JPG
    The 2nd and 3rd burrs in the first row are the ones I am primarily using. The 3rd one in has the wider cut groves.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2020
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