How hard is it to port heads? And what all is involved? My girlfriend and her family bought me all new tools for x-mas because mine were stolen a few months back. All new craftsman tools.....im in heaven. Anyhoo, now that I have my tools again Im looking at doing some work on my car and was wondering what is involved and how hard porting my heads would be.....anybody?

 

depends on how good you are workingwith your hands. If you are a ham fisted bastard forget about it.

I fully ported my own heads with 0 prior experience and an electric grinder with a flex shaft attachment. The key is to educate yourself on every last aspect of it, get your hands on every book possible dealing with the subject. David Vizzard has written alot of good stuff on the subject. Standard abrasives even has an online head porting guide which helps.

I highly suggest getting some better heads to start with though. You can probably get your hands on some 416s cheap. They are the head that came on all fbody 305s up to 1986, after that, the lb9 head is the one to get (thats the 305 tpi head)

I purchased rebuilt 416 heads with low miles for 150 dollars just to give you an idea of what is out there.

The stock 305 TBI heads are swirl port in design and are generally known to be terrible performers. They have this rediculous swirl ramp in the bowl that obstructs half the port. They can be reworked to flow more but they'll never be truely stellar performers.