has anybody gotten their tpi setup extrude honed? if so what were the results?

i plan on extrude honing my edelbrock base, slp runners, and plenum.

 

I'm thinking about getting my Super Ram runners and Edelbrock base extrude honed, but all the prices I've seen are ungodly high! Let me know what kinds of prices you are finding....all I've found so far is around $700.

 

Yeah It's spensive. Anyone know for sure if extrude honing is hands down superior to regular old elbow grease porting? I imagine the process is more expensive for a reason... can someone lay down to details to me maybe? I have a vague idea of what it is from previous snippets of knowledg-o-ccumulation but I don't know still exactly what occurs during the "honing process".

enlighten me please.

 

We're getting our Formula car's head extrude honed. The company is very good and the advantage of getting a head extrude honed is more than the obvious. First off it takes away material where there is a major impedance in flow. Examples are casting flash and around the valve guides. It also removes material from the ceiling of the port. One MAJOR reason to use them over hand porting is consistancy. Every port will turn out just like the others, kind of like CNC. The last reason why extrude honing rocks is for complicated manifolds like TPI runners, SHO u-plunum and dual runners etc. Where you can't get a tool, this stuff will remove material , BIG gains this way. The only problem with extrude honing in our case is how it smooths down every sharp surface. Since our Honda F4i motor is a 16 valve motor, the intake ports split inside the head. One common mistake is to blend it smooth when in reality since BOTH valves are sucking in air at the SAME time, slice it. This is where hand porting or CNC become the next step. So for an intake manifold, yeah, the process is da shiznit, but heads are a different story.
Hope this helps.

 

I asked them this in an email:


Do you have any flow numbers for the extrude hone process done on a TPI chevy system?Thank you

Here is there response:


Thank you for your inquiry. Rick Miller says that the airflow numbers before processing are approximately 174 cfm and after processing at about 210 cfm. If you have further questions for Rick please contact him at 1-800-613-1065 or reply to this email.



Mary Ann Stack

Marketing

I think this is for the stock tpi system.Doesnt seem like a lot of flow.It is very expensive.

 

i see around 650 for the whole tpi system on their site.

i was thinking of siamesing the slp runners on the top side as far as i can and then extrude honing it to smoothen it out and port the other parts.

 

Very good idea! It's best to do the major work by hand, then get it extrude honed, then do final shaping. For the price though you might as well sell the TPI setup and get a holley stealthram.

 

You could always try to make your own extrude honer. They just use a slurry of abrasive that is forced through the passages and slowly eats away at anything that obstructs flow. You'd need to keep close tabs on how far you have gone, these places know about how long to let the machine run with a given abrasive and material being honed.

I think the reason the you see the stock TPI set up not showing big gains from the honing is that there isn't a lot of material that can be removed without going too far.

 

I know that a good porter can far exceed the flow numbers that you get with extrude hone.
One big problem with extrude honing the heads is that they do it without the valve in place & that is a world of difference in how air flows through the port.

 

How exactly do they extrude hone a head anyway?? Doesn't the abrasive have to go in one end and out another? If you force it into tho port, where does it exit?

 

The valve port.

 

The valve port?? As in where the valve guide is?? Wouldn't that enlarge the port?? Or is that where the material is injected?

 

True true but you can't really hand port TPI runners . Acid is what I would have done to the runners to enlarge them. Then hand port the base and plenum myself port matching.
The stuff gets injected into one end and out the other, just like how air would flow. So if we're talking about TPI runners they'll inject the abrasive from where the plenum would normally be, down the runners, and back into the machine to go through again. If you look at the heads, the same process. They pump the stuff through the intake port and it comes out into where the cylinder would be normally. As for the exhaust, I have no idea if they push from the valve or if they go backwards. I would think it best for them to go the same path the air would take but I'm not sure if they'd have trouble protecting the valve guides and valve seats. If they plugged up the valve guide with a cut flush valve I don't see any problems but if they don't your right, it could take away some of the guide.
As for having the valves in the heads and how it make a big difference with air flow, yeah, but last time I checked you're not suposed to keep the valves in their when you hand port . Just busting your chops.
The process kicks but because unlike acid this takes away material only where it's an impedance to flow. It's a great way to finish off something you already hand ported.

 

Jon,
I understand your reply, but I still have a question. Where the hell does the material go if you send it into the intake port and there is a valve in place? It can't come back out the intake port right? And can't get into the cylinder because there is a valve in the way?? Maybe I'm just not picturing something correctly, but I don't have a head here at school to look at.

 

You can't get anything extrude honed if it's completely assembled. You need to send them the parts what have an in and an out unobstructed. The valve isn't in the head when they push the abrassive through.

 

Just get an inverter from Walmart that plugs into the lighter.
With the Toshiba you have you don't have a power brick to slide all over the car which will make using the inverter a real good option.

 

Wow where did that come from?

Like I said they don't hone the heads with the valve in place and that is the problem.
Another big problem that nobody has mentioned yet is that extrude hone material is pumped back in forth in both directions like a saw.... yes the pictures showing the putty exiting the part are VERY misleading as that's just for display. The actual process is different.
So that means the material flows both ways through a port that should only flow well in one direction.... this is bad.

If they would install a valve at around .500 lift and then extrude the port in one direction only, that would work better.

 

WTH was that? heh looks like that got posted to 2 threads at once...weird.