My question is will this hurt anything? Is this a bad thing to do?

 

Yes its bad. You could burn a valve.

 

impossible to burn a valve with those unplugged. essentially it's just an exhaust leak. you will find a lot of carbon buildup occure on your hood though. it probably has a little "tick" to it now too which is very annoying to me. i would think that it wouldn't sound all that good. i would plug them up just for cleanliness sake.

 

How do you think you burn valves? Burnt valves occur when you have an exhaust leak that is to close to the cylinder head. I originally thought he had no air tubes at all, leaving several huge exhaust leaks right by the exhaust valves. Now that i reread i see he still actually has the airtubes. So he probobly wont burn a valve, but its still not a good idea.

 

84firebird383 - what you've heard is at least overexaggerated, or just a myth. You'd need a huge leak, like no exhaust at all. Just open ports. And on top of that, you'd also need a cam with a lot of overlap to create a lot of reversion. Then you'd have to run it for a long time.

A small exhaust leak near the head WILL NOT cause a burned valve. If that were the case, most of us (and all "hot rodders") would be pulling heads and replacing valves on a regular basis. Exhaust leaks at the flange are quite common. Burnt valves are not.

 

Yes. I agree, but like i said before I originally thought he had 8 open holes in his exhaust manifolds right by the exhaust ports. That could be enough to burn a valve. I personally had the bad luck of blowing out a large portion of header gasket at the track. I ran it anyway despite the huge leak. When i had a valve job later my engine builder could tell.None of it pertains to johnjm22 because his leak isnt what i thought it was at first. I still say he should just plug them up.