I'm in the process of porting my SLP runners and I'm trying to figure out if there's any realistic way to open up the diameter of the runners short of extrude hone or cutting them apart then welding them back together. I've looked at some flexible rotary attachments, but most of them seem to have a head that's almost as long as my rotary tool itself, and will provide little or no benefit. I'm not aware of any curved or angled rotary attachments that would be of any benefit. Has anybody found a decent way to get at the middle of the runners?

 

Done it a number of times you have 2 options Im aware of

Take that dividing wall down a few inches til you can get your tool in there (honestly its a pain and not super effective) or get creative, cut it open port then reweld..if you really want results.

If you just take the wall down from the front youll need to buy a 6" long carbide, a mandrell for your cartridge rolls. A 1/2" dia egg shaped usually gets it done. Single or double cut doesnt matter (double easier to control). Go easy on the speed.

 

I've taken the wall down from the top already. What I'm hoping to do is to open up the diameter of the individual tubes from that point on. I may not be able to (I'm not cutting them open and re-welding), but before I cry uncle, I at least want to see if there's an "easy" option that I hadn't thought of.

 

I have no idea how it would work but, I looked on internet some time ago for ball hones, thinking one might work for this king of thing. The company I found makes flexible ball hones in all shapes, sizes and grits. I just dont know if it would be flexible enough to go around the bend in the runner.

 

Best bet is to get a 6" carbide youll need the length. It will take some time and patience to make it worthwhile as theres less leverage and control on it..may not even be purty but it will remove the metal which is what counts. I have some pics of some SLPs I did awhile back but cant find the internal pics only the outside polish. A REAL suicide mission is attempting the same on Accels. Longer and more difficult

 

I have a 6" carbide, but until I can teach it to go around corners, it's only going to get so far down the runner.

 

They make flexible shaft grinders but the hand pieces may be too long to really get down in there. Probably need a small one and only thing I can think of is a dremel tool extension but i think they may be too big at the end?

 

So far what I've found agrees with what you've seen. The flexible shafts with a 1/4" collet have such a long hand piece that I doubt it'll reach any farther than a 6" carbide. The 1/8" collet extension for a dremmel may provide more flexibility, but I'll be there for a month of sundays trying to take material away with a dremmel tool. Unless I can rig up some sort of narrow belt sander contraption, I'm starting to think that cutting away a little more of that divider wall may be my only real option.

 

Yep pretty much.
You are correct on the dia getting big as you can If I remember right there is more material on the inside of the runner than the outside wall.
Many think siamesing will give them the gains, not so. Thats just the entry way to a job thats hell. lol.

 

I did mine with large cross buffs.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SAI-260013/

Start with the blue ones and then use the red.

 

Youre on the right track Jim knock that wall down then enlarge the entire opening (dia) slowly making your way down. The wall/floor that faces the injector is much thicker so you can go to town there. Then youll find that carbide gets right down in there no problem. Little at a time.

Think most dont really dig down far enough in these castings to get that turn min. working good, thus disappointed with gains.

 

Dont use grinding stones. They clog up REALLY quick.

 

Some pix of how I did mine. Still working on them.. I was going to mill the centers out from the backside but I haven't got around to that yet :-/

 

Im thinking of welding in some sections of the outside runner to grind away the inside to make the airflow more smooth. For some reason, I think SLP had a blind person design these runners. Inside the runner, there are these huge dents that give clearance for the mounting bolts.

 

Thats what I did but I just ground them until they were smooth then welded them up. Its a very small hole to weld

 

Oh really. So would Alumniwelding rods would be ok?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2rlk...feature=fvwrel

 

This is as far as I got down with my SLP's. I had Darin Port mine, but I decided to take out my Dremel and sand down deeper. This is as far as I got with my dremel. But notice the indentions from the mounting bolts. I think its a significant obstruction. Im gonna fill in the indentions from the outside but only the lower and rear sections. I dont want to make the front of the runners look like doodoo and mess up the clean look.
3d206883.jpg?t=1341868368
e4d273b5.jpg?t=1341868363
e083b3b4.jpg?t=1341868359
8cb9cd63.jpg?t=1341868356
51da029d.jpg?t=1341868352
455cac9c.jpg?t=1341868349
5d479ff6.jpg?t=1341868345

 

All those are gone on mine. I don't have the coolant lines coming off of my T-body sooo the big indentation got filled in and opened up.

 

Im curious to see yours. When you filled in the dent where the TB coolant hose crosses the front of the runner, where you able to modify the look to the grainy sand cast type? Or did you polish up the runners a bit? Any pictures?

 

If youre careful you can make welds virtually disappear
Some SLPs. Someones "plenum.com" got ahold of these and cracked them ina vise so I got them welded up and blended it all in prior to porting (which I WISH I had pics of)

Unless you port these all the way through youre throwing your money down the toilet
Getting the flash off is not going to do anything. Dig into them, get yourself some volume





that scuffing is what someone called "ported". poor guy

Repairs undetectable even polished up perfect

 

Thats what I wanted to avoid though. I'd fill in the huge dents with aluminum, but I dont wanna go through the intense time consuming thing of polishing the runners and the plenum.

 

What you could do is just sand them down smooth fill any teeny voids with alum. rod/JB then paint. Still a pain though lol.

Youre right polishing these...nightmare

Had that happen to a members Accels noone could tell there was anything done once painted.

 

Or I could just cut out the inside of the runners, and grind out the runner divider so that instead of having 2 little tubes, there will be 1 large oval runner. Then I can just Siamese my intake base. I'm very close to making that a possibility. What do you think?

 

I'm sure that I'll have a helluva increase in hp. Maby lower low end torque like how everyone claims but the AFR 195 heads that i recently purchased should wake the heck out of my IROC.

 

Oops!!! I meant that I may lose low end torque due to increasing the runner volume but grinding out the mid section that separates the runner tubes.

 

That would put you at the point of a superram...or miniram

On a 350 I wouldntcut it all out and siamese base etc maybe somoene who has tested something like that may know better for your application. If it were me Id just take the dividing wall down a few in so you can get access to that turn and spend a whole lot of time on the rest of it dont siamese the base just port the living dog snot out of it.

Thats just me though doesnt mean its right. Those AFR heads will still starve the TPI but it will sure wake up if you put the time into them.
Last superram I did filled a 1 lb coffee can full of shavings not including the walls that were milled down or all the stuff that fell on the floor. Compacted it good to get it all in there too. It takes time but if youre patient youll be rewarded with a true increase you can feel and see on your time slip.
If you just scuff and smooth like the pic I posted of those SLPs youll be pissed it will feel the same

 

Funny you mentioned that. Guess what I did tonight? I'm not a welder, so I used JB Weld to fix the mistakes. Since the runners are dry, I don't anticipate any problems, but if I do have a problem, I'll re-do them with a better epoxy.

Incase anybody was wondering, you can go slightly less than this far without going through. You can't really tell in the pics, but those bumps are pretty much completely gone. Out of 10 bumps, I only went through on 2, so I guess that's not too bad. Hopefully I don't go through any more when I clean them up with the sand paper rolls.











JB Weld to the rescue:

 

My runners have tons of years and miles on them and they are in storage now.
I loaned them out at one time and they sandblasted and clearcoated em. I removed the clearcoat with carb cleaner because it yellowed in 100miles.
They don't look the greatest but they really picked up several tenths over the stockers and unported SLPs.