Here I am, once again begging :hail: for everyone's help here. A friend of mine upgraded his intake on his L98, and let me have his TPI intake minus TB, fuel rails. It's already polished..could use some cleaning. This intake has not yet been ported. Should I attempt to port it myself, or is it worth the money to have someone else do it professionally....??? It's plenum, runners, and base....I'd like to have it all ported is much as possible to allow for better HP increase...Someone let me know, or point me in the right directions for this project...thank you once again :hail: Your humble servent...

Zach

 

It's not really all that hard to do yourself. But if you don't already have the tools you'll have to allow for that in your budget. Not that expensive really, but a consideration. You may want to check out the threads on siamesing the stock base.
John

 

Is this a stock TPI setup? What do you have on it now? If you're already running 13.59 @ 102 with just the mods listed in your sig, I don't see how a ported stock set up would help you. That's awful good power for little $$.

 

he's running the time because of the stall converter and headers. the other stuff gave him a couple tenths but the majority is from the headers and stall converter
i'm guessing by your times you have a 350 so yes porting will greatly benifit you. you can gain a tenth or so from porting but possibly 2-3 tenths if you saimese your base. it will make your intake act like a short runner design like a LT1 intake so you will get some more power up top. you may sacrifice a little bit low end but its well worth it. its not hard to port and if you have an air compressor all you need is a die grinder, and some carbide bits for aluminum, and some paitence.
do a search for saimesing and check out my pics here
https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...threadid=80710
and if you end up not liking it you have your stock base to put back on or have professsionally ported.
give it a shot since it was free.
Andrew

 

I'm sure you've already considered this, but make sure that all the parts will swap over correctly... TPI parts changed regularly, every piece was changed at least once with the exception of the waterneck.

 

Well I dont know if the intake will fit...it's from a 92' herritage Z28...I have a 91' Z28, both 350's....I just hope to get it all ported while I still have mine on, and then just swap them.....if the swap does'nt work, that's when I'll find out...Do you guys know if machine shops charge alot for this? Becuase if it's not 2 much and it'll save me the time/chance of f*** up, then i'm all for that.....thanx again people.

Zak

 

91 and 92 are the same.

 

Yea, I figured they would swap without a problem I know it's a problem when u get to the MAF cars that are a bit older....So has anyone ever paid to have there intake's ported by a machine shop? And would it help or hurt me to siamese the base all the way through?

Zach

 

it hasn't been tried but i strongly advise against siamesing all the way through your base. the main reason is because the injectors are in your base and you may get into a situaion that the cylinder that fires first will pull more of the fuel away from the other cylinder (ex. cyl 1 may get some of cyl 3 fuel) and then make half your engine run a little rich while the other half runs a little lean. i don't think you would get into trouble if you stop about 1 inch from where the injectors sit. thats what i'm gonna try when i switch to a 350
Andrew

 

Yea, that's the same thing I was thinking.....I will leave about an inch. I really wanna have it done professionally, so if it does get ***'d up, it's on them to replace, and it's done "pro" ported by machines, and people who do that alot, and polished up really nice.....Does anyone in here have any clues how much machine shops charge (on the average) 2 port?

Zach

 

all i know is a 3 angle valve job is like $150
a regular valve job is like $100
i dunno on porting look for around $150-$200 since they will be taking out a lot of metal to siamese it
Andrew

 

You'll probably have to take the intake to a few shops and have them quote you some prices. I think it will be more expensive than you think (maybe to the point of not being worth it). Reasoning for that is that they will probably charge by the hour of shop time. Doing it by hand with a grinder would be WAY expensive in that case. Setting it up on a Bridgport mill will probably also be expensive if they have to make some kind of a fixture to hold it. I haven't tried it yet (and I will), but a TPI base doesn't look like something you can just clamp in a vise and start making chips. You may find it would be about the same price to go out an buy a new aftermarket base, maybe not. I'm going to try it myself with a mill and then with a grinder if need be. Could have made a lot of chips just in the time it took to type this response.