aftermarket heads and just way to much money for my wallet....if I was to get my stock LB9 081 heads ported...when I find a shop that can do it...do I just take thm in and say, here port them? or should I tell them what I want done to them.

What is it that needs to be don to them? to make the most power?

Sorry for the stupid question but Im clueless when it comes to this.

I looking for the most that would compliment the mods that I have now, I heard that head porting can give me 30-40 HP if not more.......

 

Some stock heads can be ported to outflow the best off the shelf aftermarket heads, infinate possibilities.

There's alot of aspects to porting, some places that only do porting have "stages" stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3 packages. If you just go to a local machine shop you will likely have to specify what you want done. Bowl work, gasket match, short side radius, etc..

I suggest since stock heads are a dime a dozen to see if you can pick up some junkers and attempt porting them, then do the heads you intend to run. To pay for porting is alot of money due to the time involved but with some common sense and if you take your time its not hard.

 

I bought the standard abrasives deluxe porting kit and a $20 straight angle die grinder from harbor freight and did mine myself. There's a lot of time involved in doing a set, but you'll save a ton of money over having a machine shop do them. Besides, I'd be willing to bet most machine shops only do a half *** job on them anyways due to the time it takes to do a really thorough job. Im only into mine about 50 bucks between the porting kit and the die grinder and I'm really impressed with the results.

 

wishmaster,
Ive been folowing your buildup and I am basically a month or two behind you doing the same thing.
I am porting my 081 castings myself and I can tell you that if you have a cam that needs bigger springs than stockers then you will be better off buying aftermarket heads. It costs alot to get the stock castings to take bigger springs and screw in studs and then porting on top of that you are prolly looking at 1000 dolars when you couldve gotten world heads that would flow better.
Unless you do the porting yourself or you can keep the stock springs I would buy aftermarket.

I think you are using a bigger cam right? I cant remember all the details though.

(edit) - ok you are only using the lt1 cam - you should be ok with the stock springs so as long as the guy who does the porting knows what hes doing and doesnt charge you 350+ you should be fine.

 

Another consideration of aftermarket heads is you can pick your combustion chamber size, spark plug angle, exhaust port shape, and if you go aluminum you save alot of critical weight.

Not to mention the money you save on hardware, like undercut valves, oversized valves are usually standard on aftermarket heads such as 2.02/1.60 etc.