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Porting intake manifolds, is it a waste of time?

52K views 25 replies 11 participants last post by  Rick WI 
#1 ·
I'm pondering whether or not to do some minor porting to my Edelbrock RPM Air Gap intake manifold in search of more upper RPM power. Is this worth the time in terms of power gains or is it just a waste of effort that will do nothing but make the manifold look better from the inside?
 
#2 ·
It certainly cant hurt to port match it to your heads. I dont remember from other threads what you have, but my Dart 230's were alot larger than my ports on my Victor Jr. intake. Plus being the EFI version I had big injector bosses sticking down. I decide it would be worth the few hours to port match and grind down the injector bosses. Like I say it cant hurt.

I found that a 1/2 inch drill and a HSS cutter worked very well on the aluminum. The slower speed seems to keep the cutter cleaner than trying to use a die grinder.

Chris
 
#3 ·
I took advice from an earlier thread on grinding aluminum and ordered a die grinder bit from Goodson. Man that thing chews fast and never clogs up either.

Just wondering, in addition to port matching the intake gasket area, is any work on the plenum going to help?
 
#6 ·
Port matching the intake side of the manifold will definitely help upper rpm hp. If the intake is bigger than the head intake port, it will cause puddling though. If the intake is smaller than the head intake port, it will increase velocity of the a/f mixture. As far as the plenum, I'd leave it alone. If you get it too smooth, it will hurt atomization of the a/f mixture.
 
#7 ·
If it is a divided plenum, you can remove some of the top center and it will improve the upper rpm range. If it is an open plenum leave it alone.

Troy
 
#8 ·
It's best to buy the manifold that best matches the size of your runners. That way the whole manifold will be sized properly. Then as recommended above, do the port matching routine. And high speed grinders work great w/ carbide bits on aluminum if you use grinder's grease that totally prevents sticky aluminum clogging of the teeth Eastwood sells it. I have a tube that has polished three tranny cases, several intake manifolds, etc., etc., and still has many projects left. Probably a lifetime supply for a hobbyist.
 
#9 ·
I have an add on question. I plan on working a Dodge 383 with MPI for the future, I'm planning on welding bungs onto a Edlebrock single plane manifold and matching it to a set of Edlebrock heads. I want to see if I can port the heads myself and I will match the heads and intake to the gasket. Question is, would I get any performance out of porting and polishing the single plane? I would think that it would. Most of the plenum will just be air, so I wont need the vaporization effect in that area. Oh almost forgot, I am looking at turbocharging it also. I feel that the smooth surface should help in the plenum, especially for the fact that it will be a positive charge. Any comments?
 
#11 ·
Big Blocks Rock said:
I have an add on question. I plan on working a Dodge 383 with MPI for the future, I'm planning on welding bungs onto a Edlebrock single plane manifold and matching it to a set of Edlebrock heads. I want to see if I can port the heads myself and I will match the heads and intake to the gasket. Question is, would I get any performance out of porting and polishing the single plane? I would think that it would. Most of the plenum will just be air, so I wont need the vaporization effect in that area. Oh almost forgot, I am looking at turbocharging it also. I feel that the smooth surface should help in the plenum, especially for the fact that it will be a positive charge. Any comments?
I dont think there is any more need to polish the intake on a turbo application. However, I have read that a perfect turbo intake would have only an open plenium all the way to the valves rather than split ports. Personnally, I am not going to be the first person to try that:)

Chris
 
#12 ·
Big Blocks Rock said:
I have an add on question. I plan on working a Dodge 383 with MPI for the future, I'm planning on welding bungs onto a Edlebrock single plane manifold and matching it to a set of Edlebrock heads. I want to see if I can port the heads myself and I will match the heads and intake to the gasket. Question is, would I get any performance out of porting and polishing the single plane? I would think that it would. Most of the plenum will just be air, so I wont need the vaporization effect in that area. Oh almost forgot, I am looking at turbocharging it also. I feel that the smooth surface should help in the plenum, especially for the fact that it will be a positive charge. Any comments?
I don't understand your statement "Most of the plenum will just be air, . . . .". Hopefully the plenum will be filled with a perfect mix of air/gasoline so the vaporization requirement will be the same as any other manifold. Smooth isn't necessarily desirable in intake manifolds. The turbulence caused by rough surfaces is useful in mixing and vaporizing the air/fuel mixture. If your car is a race car running @ 3000rpm and up, by all means get the single plane. However, if you want to do any amount of street driving, stick with the perfomace dual plane design.

On this subject, does anyone know if someone is still offering the 'extrusion' process where they force a paste loaded with carbide grit through a manifold, thus opening up the passages? It was hyped in the rod magazines for a time in the 90s and I have heard zero about it since.
 
#13 ·
polishing intakes

I highly advise against polishing intake runners both in the intake and the head. The problem with polishing them is that it allows the fuel air mixture to become unsuspended, costing a lot of HP. What you want is a florentine finish. Something to do with laminar air flow, and since Im not an aeronautical engineer, I wont try to explain it. What I do understand is that you need a certain amount of roughness in the surface of the runners and ports to keep the fuel air mixture suspended.

Polishing on the exhaust port side, however, is an excellent idea.
besides not needing the rough surface to keep the fuel air mix together, polishing the exhaust side reduces the ability of carbon etc to cling to the runners causing restriction.

I heard a lot of hype about extrusion several years ago, but the cost was so prohibitive, compared to any benefits. I think it kind of died on the vine.

You dont want to just go in and start cutting down the divider in a dual plane, indiscriminately.
There is an outfit in Wisconsin called Brezinski that specializes in doing this with factory steel intakes for stock car racing, where stock intake manifolds are required. They also do a lot of other internal work in the intakes.
Ive talked to them a few times. It takes a lot of time and work to get that just right.
Take too much and you mess up a manifold, take too little and youve done nothing.

Plenum chambers are a very finnicky area to play around in.
 
#14 ·
Right, it's not for the novice. I've see a lot of butchered intakes at swap meets. The norm for the street on a duel plane is one inch deep and two inches long in the center of the divider. other than that it would take a lot of flow testing.

Troy
 
#16 ·
Re: polishing intakes

Max Keith said:
I highly advise against polishing intake runners both in the intake and the head. The problem with polishing them is that it allows the fuel air mixture to become unsuspended, costing a lot of HP. What you want is a florentine finish. Something to do with laminar air flow, and since Im not an aeronautical engineer, I wont try to explain it. What I do understand is that you need a certain amount of roughness in the surface of the runners and ports to keep the fuel air mixture suspended.
You are correct. To make a short story long, gasoline in an intake manifold likes to condense into a liquid (@ its dew point in the manifold at many temperature/pressure conditions) and liquid/air don't distribute equally plus liquids do not burn - only gasses burn. To keep the gasoline vaporized or at least well atomized and in suspension in the air stream, there must be turbulent flow in the intake manifold runners. Turbulent flow is a precise technical term but it's meaning is pretty plain in non-technical terms.

There are several ways to induce and sustain this turbulence. One is to have the gas go around a bend which induces turbulent flow. Most manifolds don't have sharp bends so the only other alternative is to add roughness to the passages. Envision the gas flowing in a conduit and the molecules in direct contact with the conduit wall are by definition not moving. The next molecule out is moving a little but due to friction with the stationary one, it is not as fast as the next molecule out. Speed of the molecules increases as they are spaced away from the wall. This virtually no-flow region is termed the boundary layer and the thicker this is, the worse it is for an intake manifold. Continue looking at the molecules as you go to the center of the flowing stream and you will find they get faster and faster until the very center ones are fastest of all.

There is a definite break-over point in any flowing stream which is a function of fluid viscosity, velocity, and conduit roughness where fluid goes from 'laminar flow' with a very large boundary layer where there is no turbulence to the desired full turbulent flow which nearly eliminates the boundary layer. In the former case, gasoline will tend to condense and drop out of the stream causing many problems so it is good practice to design the intake runners with significant roughness.

Incidentally, this is why golf balls are designed with the rough surface - by breaking up the boundary layer of air flowing over it's surface, the ball will fly significantly farther than a smooth ball. This drag or resistance to flow by very smooth surfaces can be overcome with aerodynamic design which is why airplanes and race cars can be smooth and go fast but for shapes that can't be designed that way like golf balls, rough surfaces are preferred.
 
#18 ·
TurboS10 said:
Max and willys,

You are missing his point. On a MPEFI intake there is no fuel in the intake. Fuel is injected at the head entry point. So, intake port finish is not needed to keep fuel suspended. Only in the head is this an issue.

Chris
Hmm . . . I recall the initial question was about an Edelbrock RPM air-gap manifold which I though was a carburetor application. Correct me if I am wrong.
 
#19 ·
Willy, Some circle trackers of old are stilll doing this to there exhaust manifolds or those bound by rules with stock two barral intakes, steel heads, No porting is often a rule to help keep cost's down. Everyone knows rules just drive up the prices of power, leaving the poor man to suffer against a team with money. I currently know no one who does, for I've never asked for it. But I do know its still around.
 
#20 ·
EXTRUDE HONE

Willys, the method was called extrude hone, and I think an abrasive clay like media was used.

I've done something similar to this before, which is kind of an extreme sand blasting operation. High air pressure and some fairly rough sand ran though a port for a period of time.

I've even finished hand port jobs with fine white silica sand, and it really smooths the work out.

The rougher sand does more "removal" , and the finer sand leaves a cleaner finish. I usually do this after hand porting, because the effectiveness works better on iron that has already had the factory porous cast removed.

It will surprise you how much you can change the port by doing this. Does it help? I think it does to a small degree. After all, if you are blasting sand suspended with air through a passage, the airflow through it is similar to air/fuel mixure passing through the port on a live engine.
I like the asthetics of my work after blasting it, but that's more fit and finsh than anything else.

Alot of racing rules prohibit this practice as well as acid porting
 
#21 ·
extrusion honing

I'm pondering whether or not to do some minor porting to my Edelbrock RPM Air Gap intake manifold in search of more upper RPM power. Is this worth the time in terms of power gains or is it just a waste of effort that will do nothing but make the manifold look better from the inside?
I thought this was the origional question.

As for the sandblasting runners and ports, That would probably leave the kind of finish I was talking about, a florentine, rather than mirror polishing them.

The process that I had seen articles on was that they were usingvery dense sand slurry (consistancy of mud) to actually enlargen the runners. The last time I saw an article on doing that was in the early 80's, and it was $600-1000 bucks to do a manifold, and about double for heads.

The last time I checked, an RPM Air Gap was a carbureted intake, not an FI unit.

Willys36, Im glad you are the aeronuatical engineer on this one. You did a lot better job of explaining the laminar air flow thing than I could.
 
#22 ·
If I am in search of a rough surface after polishing an intake port in cylinder heads, I just lightly grind the surface with a rough stone so it looks like a roughly honed cylinder wall. I keep the scratches perpendicular to airflow to help with suspension.

Thanks for all the extra info on manifolds though, was not expecting a huge discussion on a simple question :) Nice to see lots of ideas.
 
#23 ·
Rough Ports (was in a few in the Navy)

What would probably do a better job would be one of those emery paddle wheel sanders with some 20-40 grit, run at a very low speed.

This would give you more of a cross-hetching pattern as you would see after you run a glaze buster down through a cylinder.
 
#24 ·
[email]willys36@aol.com[/email] said:
Hmm . . . I recall the initial question was about an Edelbrock RPM air-gap manifold which I though was a carburetor application. Correct me if I am wrong.
Yep, I am sorry.

I think I somehow got confused from another post or from PM's. I have been talking EFI with another member and for some reason I thought that this engine was going to be MPEFI.

Carry on......I agree with the not polishing

Chris
 
#26 ·
There is only one way to reasonably identify if the intake is a restriction to the heads, that's on a flow bench. Even then, you don't get a clear picture on a carburated appplication since in actual use you will be flowing both air and liquid not just air. But, even so on the flow bench with the carb bolted to the intake and the intake bolted to the head you can see trends. In some applications we see no difference. A couple of weeks ago on a Ford head with the new Edelbrock Victor EFI manifold we lost over 20 cfm from .500 lift up. So that intake is getting some work done to it. That's a ton to leave on the table. Worst case on a serious street application we like to see less than 2% change max.

Intake runner size and plenum volume play a huge role in making power, so it is something to think about in a stout build up. Stout being 450hp+ small blocks and maybe 550hp+ big blocks as some general guideline. In my intake I have about $1700 invested in both the bare Super Vic plus porting work in the runners and plenum plus the cost of the EFI parts. Since I run EFI the inside of my Super Vic looks nothing like the inside of a stock one. It's all setup to flow air only. Having 454 cubes also meant everything has to be much bigger to keep velocity down. So in answer to the question on EFI, your correct. The intake needs/can be optimized to flow air. What changes need to be made? You really need to work with a cylinder head person directly on that. They will want the heads and the intake. You do want to get those bung out of the runners though.

You want to minimize turbulence in the intake as it slows flow. That is the gripe a lot of racers have with the plenum design on the Super Vic. The wings induce too much turbulence making the turn out of the plenum and they flow like crap, as we found out again two weeks ago. A Victor Jr. or Victor E is a better intake choice in many applications.

Working the inside of the plenum is all based on the cubic inch and cylinder head flow of the engine and heads. Just opening up the intake plenum may not make a difference, and may really hurt you as cylinder distribution can be affected. We have a person with Edelbrock in their R&D department that we contact with specific application issues. I wish I could post his name but I'd be shot. What I would suggest is if you think you have an application out of the ordinary and need some advice on what to do, contact Edelbrock and see if they can guide you in the right direction. If you have the flow data prior to calling then you might have some luck getting with someone who deals with it every day.

When our guy is finished porting an intake for either EFI or carb it is basically similar to a CNC or sand rolled finish inside.

Extrude Hone is alive an kicking. Just saw them at PRI in Indy a month ago. Still whore house priced but sometimes it's the only option if you have to run stock stuff and can't get the porting tools in there. It does the same things as acid porting only leaves a very smooth finish on the surface.

Brezinski is about an hour from where I live. What they specialize in, and do a very good job at, is acid dipping. We do this all the time as well, in restricted iron cylinder head and intake circle track motors. Basically you use a much more potent muratic acid mixture and fill the intake runners or cylinder head ports and let sit for a period of time. The port openings are sealed with special rubber plugs you fabricate up to contain the acid. The result is the acid eats into the ports, runners, plenum and opens them up all while keeping all the original casting marks intact. Therefore it still looks stock, expect it's bigger. This is beneficial as on a lot of these restricted motors we spin them to 7000-7500 RPM. We need as much volume as possible.

As for matching an intake to a head. If the intake only has a slight mismatch into the head and the intake is smaller than the head there is very little if any change in power with this minor mod. If the intake is bigger than the head and the airflow hits the wall of the cylinder head that's not the best and should be fixed. Air doesn't like to hit a wall.
 
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