I have seen where people have laid thier new intake to heads gaskets down and marked where the gasket opening is larger than the runners. Then they would grind away the excess metal in the area. More or less opening the runners at this point by a little bit. I checked to see if my gasket openings were larger than the gasket. There was between 1/8 to under 1/32" difference. Is it worth grinding or porting this area? I have polished my intake runners on the manifold as best I could.

I just got my heads back and they are fully put together. I believe I have the ability to pull the springs off if need be. Is this worth doing. If I did what difference could I expect. I understand that this would only open an area in the middle of the run and not the whole way.

So... Is it worth it?

 

How much power are you making now? and what other modifications have you done? This will likely not make any difference on many applications. If you are chasing those last few HP and have done most everything else, you may find a difference. Seat of the pants? ZERO difference. Quarter mile ET maybe a little. Little.

 

It is stock, well just about. Cylenders .02 over. Block decked to raise compression about half a point. Dual exhause in the future. Everything else are to stock parts or specs. Not going for anything major. Dad thinks I should leave it alone as the heads are already fully put together. If I will not really notice it, then I will not mess around with it. Sounds like the best thing to do.

But I didn't know how much I could be loseing out on. Sounds like very little in my case.

 

Very little. You can sleep well. With some work you will probably find more power in your distributor with good tuning [free!] than that.

 

Really? I'm a mopar fan but when it comes to the newer (and by newer i mean computerized) vehilces the distributer is controlled by the computer more or less. Can you actually play with the timeing on the dist. on my 90' RamCharger? I'm no expert yet, but I hope to be one someday, so go easy on me.

 

Sorry, I was stuck in "old timer" mode. I had just assumed it was an older one. My bad, sorry.

 

not realy worth it , if you are only cleaning up the inlet opening . i would my self but i'm a porting junkie . bowl blending is were you spend the time & effort .

 

Sounds like what you're talking about is port-matching your intake to the heads. This eliminates the misalignment that often occurs between the two. If it's done correctly it can noticibly improve the efficiency of any engine particularly the low and mid range torque (=better holeshot and gas milage). You may see a little extra Hp as a bonus -though as Dead Kelly mentions you really need to do a bit of bowl work too.
If you do port match you need to give the matching work a good transition at the join and not simply bellmouth the ends of each port. Doing this will actually harm flow and generally make for less efficiency and power.
Once you've got your ports matched, the new shape needs to be blended into the port both directions as far as you're able (or willing).

It's possible on many engines to achieve noticable results doing this but obviously results will vary from engine to engine. Back in the bad old days when I used to run SBC, I port-matched the carbed 355 in my yacht-like Caprice Coupe and gained almost 2 whole tenths at the track -mostly off the first 330ft. It'd be interesting to see how a modern ECU'd engine responded. Either way, if it's done right, it ain't gonna hurt......

 

I'm a tad apprehensive about it cause I have never seen anything line-up well enough to want to work off it. The gasket doesnt match the intake, the head, or the valley pan. Which one is "true"? I'd like something that is constant that I trust to work off of, and a gasket isnt it. Ive seen "gasket matched ports", but I dont even trust the gasket. I wish there was a TRUE template available.

 

This is the beauty of mass production and the resultant possibilities of tolerance stack up. However, if you take your time and some trouble, there's no cause for apprehension.

The only thing you can work off in this area with anything close to reliability are the dowel pins in the heads. If you want to do the whole nine yards with engineers blue and a scriber, you can. But I think the average backyard wrench can get good results without going to the n'th degree.
Essentially, port-matching or gasket matching is done with the specific engine in mind. If you remove a port matched intake and offer it up to another similar engine, there's no guarantee that it'll necessarily exactly match. The worst possible case scenario is a step up from the intake runner into the head. This will kill any meaningful flow. Likewise a step down, while not the best idea, won't hurt flow anywhere near as bad and will often assist fuel atomisation as any puddled fuel in the runner will shear off the step into the air flow again.
Done right, port matching is a good idea and must be done on a custom basis for each individual motor. If you need a template, so long as you use the same gasket each time (and don't arbitrarily change brands), there's no reason you couldn't mix and match intakes and heads. If you do change brands you need to avoid pieces of gasket hanging out in the breeze in the port for obvious reasons but if your new gasket has slightly larger port holes than your template gasket (and therefore your head ports), this should not hurt flow perceptably.

People write whole books on this subject and it's probably worth reading some of them. Port or gasket matching is definitely a good idea but the results are dependant on how good the matching was to start with. IMO many modern engines are pretty good out of the box.

 

right when i port heads i put the gasket i'm using on the head i port the gasket & head togeather if need be ( but i never use stock cam or carb i'm a angry guy i must have angry engine ) then put the gasket onto the inlet manifold & see where i'm at from there . i like to stay a tiny bit smaller on the inlet manifold so then that way it will always flow inside the heads window so 2 speak . & like old mate said it can always step out to fill the heads port . never make the manifolds port bigger then the heads . some people don't like porting but as long as you don't dig in , just glide lightly all over the port & smooth out or round any sharp edges casting flash ect & any over hanging valve seat you almost can't go wrong JUST REMBER YOUR NOT DIGGING TO CHINA . & for guys with carbs before you put your carb on see if the carb gasket over hangs into the parth of air fuel if so grind or cut / scribe with razor any access gasket off it will only make it run how it was ment to . i think porting is CLEANING up the port to how it's ment to be .