Head Porting

[smokinwater]

Does anyone know of any shops in the states that specialize in head porting of diesel engines?

[bosefes]

I don't know of any but it's been discussed on here before. It's not really cost effective unless you do it yourself on a daily driver vehicle. Forced air induction does not benefit as much as a Naturally Aspirated engine would to this. I'm not saying that it doesn't help, but you would probably get more bang for your buck with a better turbo, air filter, injectors and so on...

Dave

[clamgulch]

yeah, and depending on what engine (7.3 in particular) if you just slap on the bigger turbo without addressing the restrictions in the heads, you will have significantly reduced the efficiency of the design. You can end up with higher back pressure without getting significantly more air into the combustion chambers, which certainly leads to more "bang" for the buck alright- especially when you pump up the pressure and don't bother with heavier springs. Suddenly you have valves that blow open hitting pistons, blown head gaskets, failed PMR's, out of control EGT's, intake temps that you wouldn't believe as the air compresses in the "necks" before reaching the bowls, puked turbos, turbo lag, blown hoses and intake plenums, etc. Ignorance is bliss- right up until reality bites.

Porting my 7.3 heads helps tremendously- 100 degress lower temps and aprox 75 more hp, but it was so time consuming (100 hours) and such a filthy PITA that I'd never do another set of them. It's not cheap either- a die grinder with a compressor big enough to run it (or big heavy electric die grinder), numerous carbide burrs (some of which can kill you because of their length) , and about a million sanding cartridges are spendy, as well as very hard on the elbows, wrists, lungs and sinuses. I was offered $2,000 to do another pair and said NO. Mine are for sale for $2,000 if anyone is interested. New valves, seats, guides, hypermax springs, hardened pushrods, all with 10,000 gentle miles on them. Two bent valves (a very easy and inexensive fix) from an unrelated incident- a Cunningham connecting rod fatigue cracked and broke off. That was the last straw for me and I began the process of converting to a Cummins.

BTW, I documented the entire process on here a few years ago- don't know if that can still be accessed.

Porting is such a nasty job that I paid someone else to port my 5.9 cummins head.

[Homemade WRX]

as clamgulch said, porting is almost always worth it for any application...I'm by no means a powerstroke expert but I do design and build engines for a living (a bored mechanical engineer who hates 9-5 office jobs) and part of which is porting heads.
For a mildly modified (increased boost and injectors) towing setup it will help out. It will knock down those EGT, help with manifold pressure ratio (making a happier turbo) and will increase tq/hp too. Of course for a race truck the more you will see in the way of gains, as the heads are more a of a restrcition to it.
-Micah

[PTC_POWER]

should be done on a a peterson, sunen , etc.

my opinion

new seats installed 3 angle cut.
new valves.
new springs.
new seals.
new locks, maybe.

since you have the head off, go ahead and stud it.

just what I did to mine.

if you don't have the machines to do it with you can use your hand tools.
start with goodson, they have the tools that you need to do it with.

[Homemade WRX]

I use a serdi for my valve jobs and a sf-600 for varification