yes I found somebody who had the swirl ramp cut out of the intake side of the swirl port heads.He said the improvement was astonishing.Cant remember the exact port size when it was done but he said something like 182.Ofcourse I asked him why go through all the trouble and money on these heads, his reply was, didnt think I needed to go out and buy heads when I have a set right here.He's running a .525 lift cam with room to spare, 1.6rr's.
To my fellow 3rd Gen folks, what is your take on this???LO5 motor by the way, and the heads are 193's, I looked, he didnt mind me pulling the valve cover. And yes its was carbed

 

I've done it myself, but on a Pontiac 151 head. I only did it because there were no other castings available. It is relatively easy if you have a vertical mill and boring bar/flycutter. A bull-nose mill would also get you close, but there would be some more hand work necessary after hogging out the ramps.

To me, with the availability of replacement castings, and the desire to take plenty of time to machine and assemble the heads correctly, I'd rather get spares, get them ready, and drive the car until swap time. You can usually change heads in a day, but can easily spend a week porting heads.

 

took me 4 straight days of solid work to change my heads and all i did were the gaskets

 

 

so basically its not really worth messing with?....not a bad thing, just not worth it huh

 

being that the car isnt an everyday driver, think it would be worth doing? Rather than trying to find spairs and spend money on them, just let the car sit an have the swirl ports bored out and milled and whatever else. opinions are what is gonna stear me to do it or not

 

dang, moving back down the list again.....

 

Heck. I didn't even remove the swirls just ported them (350- 193's) and gained 40Hp to the rear wheels. From 210 to 250 (w/TPI stock base and runners)

 

I would do that but I need high end power and dont want the swirls killing the high rpms....well through 5700rpm

 

dont get me thinking about porting my L03s and sticking them back on the car in place of the Lb9s i just put on there.

 

lol....yeah, seen your thread....looks like ya having some probs, hope you get it worked out

 

man am i...not even funny, we all are stumped on this one.

im almost wondering if im getting too much fuel. im gonna make my stock tbi fuel pressure regulator , an adjustable one, and see where that gets me.

i still refuse to believe its the heads. i mean, would a bent valve / compresion leak cause the car to run perfectly for 15 mins, then just straight crap out after its good and warmed up?? still sounds electrical / ecm to me.

 

Its that damn Throttle body fuel injection slowmaro

carb carb carb...you know you wanna do it. You have all the parts just do it!

 

shut up dan!!! i know i know!!! minus the afpr....

by the way, i either made my Fuel pressure regulator adjustable, or i destroyed it, we will see tomarrow lmao

 

hell I ditched the tbi and threw a carb on it.....lovin it to

 

im so close to doin that , its not even funny.

 

nothing wrong with TBI it pretty ingenious actually the only thing better about carb are the manifolds! you only waste gas! heads and cam heads and cam!!!


and you cant cut the swirls out of TPI heads to gain 40 hpo cause there are no swirls on tpi , did you mean you hade lo3 heads on a ti or you converted to tpi from TBI?

 

if youve ever ported and polished heads yourself, which most of us have, youd know it takes about a week to do a simple port and polish, i wouldnt dare dream about trying to cut the swirl ports out myself without having access to a machine shop.

it would take a damn month to get those suckers grinded down lol

 

Well I just smoothed out the exhaust ports in my 193 heads in about 1 hour (not bowls yet). After bowls are done, I'll polish them up. Actually with a decent set of double cut carbide burrs, it won't take long at all, to get the swirls at least cut flush, with the valve guides. However, that's only as far as I'm going with mine. I'm not going to bother going any lower. These heads appear to need minimal work, for the application I'm using them for. Even the intake ports are almost perfectly gasket matched already. Do like Vader suggested and pickup a cheap set to work on, while still having use of your vehicle.

 

im scratchin the whole idea.....uncle has some 186's I can have, but still somthing to think about for some future projects....yes I have access to fathers machine shop. and no I dont know s--t about machining, so his hired hands will do it..lol

 

i was using double cut carbid tips and it still took me forever,...and the intake ports on my l03s were perfectly gasket matched yes, BUT however it had a damn ledge behind that perfect gasket match, ...complelty disrupted smooth air flow .

who knows, maybe ill get bored one day and port the L03s and sell them for 5 bucks lmao

 

you lucky bastard.

 

lucky in getting the 186's or pops machine shop that I know nothing about....im a tranny mechanic not an engine mech...he has a junk yard but all the good heads have been carried off long ago

 

ok you come rebuild my tranny, and ill do your heads...deal? lol

 

welllllll......lets see how your heads come out first....lol ... not laughing at you just the situation sounds like my luck

 

hey the heads themselves came out great! its just some other random uh, ..Thing, that i have no clue as to what it is, ...some ecm related..Thing! that wont let my idle be stable for longer than 15 mins.

im going to make my a/f ratio adjustable by means of hooking up an Variable Resistor from radio shack in between the o2 sensor wire, and the wire that leads from the o2 sensor to the ecm.

0 ohm to 1k ohm. and then i will have a suitable, stable a/f ratio.
did i mention adjustable ??

 

not loop related is it...ya know heat or somthing??

 

your guess is as good as mine, i scanned it, block learn drops to 97 after 15 mins of idling, car just acts like it runs out of gas, which it may very well be doing in one form or another, so im gonna make the adjustable a/f thing and see what i can do with that.

my car is gonna look like apollo 13 with all these funky un marked switches and *****....heh

 

Only have about 1/2 hour in it so far, in cutting down the swirl in the intake. Now it's pretty close to the guide's height after roughing it out. Haven't decided how low I will go. Have to hook up the water separater to my compressor. Just too much condensation, so probably won't finish them as fast as planned. Still have some work to do. Probably should pickup a SA kit to finish them up. However, so far so good. I don't have a flow bench but can feel/see a dramatic difference with spraying air or water through the port.

John

Before...


So Far...

 

Those look pretty good for a start. When I did mine I cut them down even with the guide and took them all the way even to the wall (actually a bit more since I hogged out the bowls). I also smoothed the ramp out so that it had a nice slope to it and not that sudden dropoff from cutting the swirl out. You can also cut out a bit of the guide itself (not much though) and work on shaping the roof (around the swirl) so that it is wider and more rounded, if you know what I mean (it'll make sense when you look at it) It's a good start, but there's still lots tobe done. You'll be happy when you're finished, with my set of ported 193's heads on my rebuilt truck motor (and a slightly larger cam) there was a huge difference, it's much faster now and can spin the tires whenever you feel like it. Now I just have to get my LG4 to do that.... Cam/carb swap coming soon though....

 

Thanks Kyle. I'll keep at them. Have to pickup a couple of longer cutters to finish roughing the bowl and swirl. I'll just cut down the other swirls in the remaining intakes until they arrive. Might as well get under the seat area as well now. Just out of curiosity, I have to compare them to one of the junk(cracked) sets of 083's I still have sitting around.

John