Port and polish

[Edgefevah]

What is everyone's opinion on port and polishing with a deemed tool if you don't have access to a air die grinder?

I'm looking at the dremel 3000 tool


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[RonD]

Polishing would be OK, porting might take some time depending on the amount of metal that needs to be removed.

 

[JoshT]

Are you sure that you want to port and polish? I had considered doing it on the 99 that I'm about to rebuild the motor in. Have decided not to because it will affect the power band too much. Mine is a 4x4 truck that I use as a 4x4 truck. Need to keep the low and mid range power, not much needed on the high end where the porting would have been beneficial. As for polishing, only do it on the exhaust side. It's okay to clean up any rough casting marks on the intake side, but you want to leave it with a kinda rough finish. In the exhaust side polishing can help with flow, but in the intake side it can hurt fuel atomization.

As for using a dremel, sure it'll do the job. Really it'll do the job almost as well as an air grinder, just might take a little longer. Many of the bits would be the same for either tool. If I were going to buy a dremel for it I'd pick up the most powerful one you could get. Personally I think I'd also get one of these: 225-01 Flex Shaft Attachment

 

[Edgefevah]

Yeah I more then likely won't polish it much only smooth it out, for the most part I'll be gasket matching and smoothing out any casting crap. The most powerful one they have is 35,000RPM


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[truckerdawg]

What do you need? Or want? If a few extra horses then yes with just moderation and port matching on the grinding part for the intake and exhaust ports and runners. But polishing ( to me) seems a waste of a lot of time. Take a look at you heads' exhaust runners a year after being run on the vehicle and you will find not a smooth runner but a crud coated runner just like a non-polished runner. And then you will say to yourself that was a ton of hours making that runner baby smooth for nothing. But really I cannot imagine the need for more than the aftermarket enginequest heads, comp cams bigger cam, and headers with a good exhaust(no restrictions catch my drift) and port matching. Maybe a little smoothing around the valve stem bosses would be all.

 

[turbo2256b]

A dremel will work started with one (actually more than one) in the mid 60s. Started with U comtrol airplane engines, then go karts , lawn mowers, then cars.
Issues with them is first the tools they sell for them are pricy and wear out quick. Think I rember sometimes one or two cutters just to do one port and that would be the rough cut.

How I port heads for low end torq is usally just bowl port the heads and blend in the short side radii. Back cut the valves. Done correctly by a pro without even changing another thing can pick up a lot of low end tork.
Have found port matching dosent realy do much in most cases. Which wall to port match and which not to can be more important if done at all.