spare 2.3T head what to do?

Topic: spare 2.3T head what to do? (Read 1599 times) previous topic - next topic

spare 2.3T head what to do?

Reply #15 – August 31, 2008, 10:25:13 PM

aaah, thanks chuck w thats what i was looking for. i was thinking ranger or esslinger but i will look at this source as i haven't heard of it before. they are installing hardened seats and cleaning the head up for me but i wasn't sure if i need to go bigger valves while i have it at the machinist.. as far a porting at home...i have a nice new dremel but what sort of stone do i start with and how do you port match head to intake? do you use the gasket as a template for both?

spare 2.3T head what to do?

Reply #16 – August 31, 2008, 10:56:29 PM

well first off, porting with stones will take FOREVER. I ported my head and used the 6" carbide bits from summit in an air die grinder. You will need to make sure that everything has a nice smooth transition and when I took my head in to have seats and valveguides put in it, the guys I took it to are a real high performance shop and he said my port job looked great and said the way the 2 and 3 intake ports sucked because they were really easy to get in the water jacket. Oh, and its wierd seeing an iron 2.3 head in there with all those aluminum sbc heads, rofl. A dremel will probably be dead after one port, lol. I used a boport 1.9 cam with the used roller rockers from him and springs. I maxed out the stock fuel system with my holset hx35 at 12# of boost at 5000 rpm.

spare 2.3T head what to do?

Reply #17 – August 31, 2008, 11:04:21 PM

Go for the larger valves if you can/want to. I wasn't going to spend the $$ on mine, so I stayed stock. Have them do the seats and guides though and hold off on the valve work until you are done with the porting to avoid messing up valve jobs.

You'll need carbide bits to port an iron head, you won't get far with a stone and a dremel. I use the carbide bits and then clean up/smooth with sanding rolls.

You DO NOT want to gasket match on the intake side. Unless you can really maintain runner cross-section all the way through (which is pretty difficult on a stock intake) one of the worse things you can do is open it up at the head only to have it neck back down in the port to the CC. A smoothing out and cleaning up of injector bosses is really all you want to try and do on the stock intake.
On the head side, again, don't try and match the port to the gasket. Clean/smooth the runner and spend most of your time cleaning up the valve guide boss and the bowl area (where the port enters the comb chamber).

You can open up things a bit more and hog things out, but unless you really know the magic to it, you can do more harm than good.

One thing you can do is open up the exhaust runner in the head, but it takes a bit of work and a certain way to do it. You do NOT want to touch the floor of the port other than the smooth it. Basically you want to "raise the roof" of the runner to effectively increase it's radius, thus improving flow (the less sharp the turn the air has to make, the faster it moves). On mine I worked it up a bit and then carried that transition all the way to the bowl area.

You can see how rough the bowl area is on a stock head here
http://www.turbochuck.com/images/Tbird/2.3T%20Refresh/headbefore.JPG

and how much you can clean it up here

http://www.turbochuck.com/images/Tbird/2.3T%20Refresh/headafter.JPG
(I also unshrouded the valves a bit).

I could have gotten really crazy on the guide boss (some guys take them down all the way), but chose not to.

Anyway, I am no expert at all at this, just trying to pass on info.

spare 2.3T head what to do?

Reply #18 – August 31, 2008, 11:20:42 PM

here is my head before going back on. unfortunately I took a bunch of pics of the first head I did that I ported a hole through:punchballs: but I didnt take many of this one

And how it sounded on first startup with the 1.9 cam. One thing I will say about that cam, is that if you live in an area that has a lot of hills, you will probably hate it because it doesnt have much in the way of a bottom end. this is with open downpipe though. Through dual magnaflows, its actually pretty quiet