Automatically adjusting intake ports

[cj011]

so what do you recommend on the seats?

[Reaper1]

He could tell ya, but then he'd have to kill ya! LOL

[Jack's Dodge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanJ Intake port surface finish HAS been hashed & re-hashed over and over & over by alot of very noted head porters & engine builders. Your ideas are not new.... It's just that most of the ones playing with this stuff don't share their info/research.

Everything time this information is posted, someone is compelled to state the obvious. He never said it was soley his genius that devised this method of head work. Of course it is not new

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanJ My best advice would be to start spending more time playing with valve seat angles/widths/top cuts/valve radiuses/back cuts, now there is some-where you can make or break a head power wise. 100 hours of reserach on the seats will yield 100X more power gains than playing with surface finish. ;)

You know, adjusting the valve seats is not a new idea;) Yes he has done this already. He did a head for my n/a neon in fact. Gos willing, I'll be able to pick it in the next week or so. What he does is no secret people. He can be reached by phone, and you can stop by his house (when he is around). He encouraged me to tool around with these ideas, hence the pics posted. That head is going on later this week. Just has the raise the floors on the intake side and install the valves. Mind you, I have no real mechanical experience or training. How to measure the results? This mainly being done to increase mpg, though this efficiency increase should give some power as well. The next head will be more documented and dynoed.

[The Pope]

there is a lot in the seats. If not cut right leaving sharp edges you can make a bigger valve flow less. You need to go as big as you can and not hurt the air transition into the combustion chamber. Port shape and valve shape effect this from head to head, so the idea of spend that much time on seats isn't far off. I've taken a second head and ported it the same, then made 4 different cuts and flow benched them to see what happened. Thats is not really going far, but I garage port =)

Grooved ports has been done by Indy for years, that is old news. The reason for it is that air is more slick than metal, polished or not. The grooves keep what is called a boundry area of air on the surface of the port. The boundry area works like a grease for the air to slide better. It can also cause vac that keeps the air to the port on inside turns. In the old days and some dinosaurs still add matterial to make the inside surve larger to keep the air planted to go faster.

Back to the TD world, who has the money and who is spending it for every last few HP? Will someone that can't afford to have the right gauges to tune there car right in the first place go through the trouble of these head mods? The only TD head that can use this basically out of the box is a 655, the rest need massive porting before they could use it. Then our heads already, easily make more flow than we can give them with factory intakes. A 1 piece kills 40 CFM per port on my heads, is it worth the trouble to get a few more CFM out of a head already restricted? You can get your Neon head CNC ported with boundry grooves for $400 with Indy (last I priced it). 300 + CFM with the grooves with fast turn around. So Neon people have a step up anyway. Most TD people need to fix what they have.

[Jack's Dodge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pope Back to the TD world, who has the money and who is spending it for every last few HP? Will someone that can't afford to have the right gauges to tune there car right in the first place go through the trouble of these head mods? The only TD head that can use this basically out of the box is a 655, the rest need massive porting before they could use it. Then our heads already, easily make more flow than we can give them with factory intakes. A 1 piece kills 40 CFM per port on my heads, is it worth the trouble to get a few more CFM out of a head already restricted? You can get your Neon head CNC ported with boundry grooves for $400 with Indy (last I priced it). 300 + CFM with the grooves with fast turn around. So Neon people have a step up anyway. Most TD people need to fix what they have.

Well, there are those TD owners that have spent over $1000 on their 8v heads, so let's not make it seem as though all TD owners work crappy jobs living in mother's basement. This is no about the price, or making money. What good are high CFM numbers when you mileage takes a hit? Sure you are flowing air like mad, upgrade your fuel system to keep from leaning out, and your hp numbers bare the fruits of your efforts. Great right? You loose about 10mpg (if not more) and now need another car to drive around in. Efficiency is really what it is about. Burning up more fuel through a more complete burn, and giving the engine what it needs to do so.
Sure we can debate what we all know from our own experiences until we get blue in the face. Have a little internet squabble, but what would that accomplish? Raised blood pressure and ill feelings. This is not highschool, as we all know. Mike and I have discussed this information many times on the phone and in person. Along with discussing where he has been getting these ideas and information (That's right! he did not think this up by his lonesome!), he expressed there is more than one way to put these grooves into you head, alter the combustion chamber, and reshape intake and exhaust runners. This is not a "one trick" pony. So not all the cheap TD owners are not forced to save for 6 months to buy a head, go into debt, and have to resell on ebay. Did mine on a box in the living room . Going to reshape the intake runners and put the head on later this week. This is my only car, but it is the need to move forward that drives me to do these things. The ford lsd idea was not mine at all. Took the initiative to copy the work of others, and now I have a $12 mustang lsd in my neon. Going to need it if the headwork was done properly. hoping for a nice jump in mpg, even in there is no hp gain. I'll let everyone know just how I did what was done, and what comes next. 2.4L of course.

[RyanJ]

Actually off top of my head I don't recall what my angles/widths are for the small vlave stuff. I don't do very much of it, we specialize in V8 wedge heads with valves between 2.02-2.25" on intake an 1.54-1.65" on exhaust. The smaller valve stuff like a 8V 2.2/5 head & 4 valve per cyl stuff require different seat widths/angles to make right. I have one set of custom Sunnen VSI cutters I had made when I was doing some Mitsu 4V stuff for another shop as a side project. Those cutters are most likely what I will use on my 2.2 head. It will be first and probably only attempt at a 2.2/5 head. They have a 45 degree seat, that's about all I can tell you... I'd actually probably go down to around a 40, if I was doing a new set just for turbo 2.2/5 head. But the difference will not be worth the extra $ to me to make a new set to do 1 head.

I did'nt realize INDY did anything "unusual" with their neon stuff. I have seen it at their display trailer, but never spent more than 10 seconds looking at it. I'm just wondering if the "lines" you are seeing in the ICH stuff is not just the "step over" lines from the CNC.... We are an ICH Warehouse Distributor, so I guess I'll ask Russ next time I talk to him.

Good info on the 1 piece intake manifold killing 40 cfm of flow on the head.... Guess I need to get a spare 1 piece & test it on my head on the bench when I start grinding. Not that it matters nearly as much once it it under boost, but anytime I can eliminate a restriction I will. Doing that should certainly help the engine work a little better when it is putting around under vacuum.

My only reason for posting was simply to express my opinion that lines & texturing on intake port walls does'nt do anything.... other than change cross section very slightly, & create a slightly "thicker" turbulent boundry layer. Any gains you see from economy etc from one of these heads with that mod, will most likely be found from the singh grooves in the chamber (grooves on quench pads) They WILL effect economy & burn slightly. Power.... not so much.

My personal 2.2 Turbo heads will have 60 Grit sand roll finish to the intake ports with hand sanded (using piece 100 grit paper on finger) short turns, Chattered up intake throat seat area, & 80 grit sand rolled chambers & Ex ports. Again with hand sanded short turns. I'll post before/after results, along with intake manifold testing as well once I get done. Still waiting on my head core to arrive.

[RoadWarrior222]

For the really sharp turns, I'm a beleiver in deeper ridges, to really trip the air up and face plant it around the hairpins. Also should pre-empt formation of large blocking vortexes behind sharp turns and replace them with smaller vortexes that shed from the surface and don't impede flow. I think of it as trying to ram ping pong balls down your intake vs turning them into a lot of small ball bearings. The ideal solution is of course to redesign the head such that flow is entirely in the laminar region and there are no radiuses tighter than about 3 or 4 inches. The next to ideal solution on a production head would probably entail a lot of welding up. Methods of fixing flow around sharp radiuses like this do have one curious advantage, if you only put the larger ridges upstream of discontinuities, then the port should flow a lot better forward than it does in reverse. Well that's the theory.

[Jack's Dodge]

Keep an open eye. TU may have some new products soon...

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanJ My only reason for posting was simply to express my opinion that lines & texturing on intake port walls does'nt do anything.... other than change cross section very slightly, & create a slightly "thicker" turbulent boundry layer. Any gains you see from economy etc from one of these heads with that mod, will most likely be found from the singh grooves in the chamber (grooves on quench pads) They WILL effect economy & burn slightly. Power.... not so much.

Let me add this bit of information. Just got to re-reading what you said, and it seems you might not have all the information regarding the grooves in the head.

Liquid fuel does not burn. Proven fact. Leave a gallon of gas sitting long enough for the vapors to dissipate, and you have harmless liquid fuel. Toss in a match to watch nothing happen. The fumes/vapor are what your car runs on. Those groove in the head suspend the liquid fuel from the combustion chamber, until it is hot enough to mix with the incoming air charge. At this point the fuel has become heated, trapped in the grooves, and will burn more completely when it reaches the combustion chamber. That is the meat of it all. One could go further as to manipulate the air flow to create more turbulence.

Head porting for more is nothing more than making intake and exhaust runner as large as possible. That is only half the picture. Engines do not run on just air alone, so not you have to add more fuel to create a properly balanced air fuel mixture. This method only proves two wrong do not make a "right," as now your mpg goes down. Again, the combustion chamber runs off fuel vapor and air. Liquid fuel is not ready for this process as it is currently presented to the engine. It's molecular structure at the temperature it is spraying into the engine is not hot enough to burn completely. Heating the fuel to the point it can be completely burned will increase mpg, and overall hp. What point is that? The exact temperature I do not know. Running the fuel line through the hot side of the coolant system or near the exhaust manifold will duplicate the same effects as the powre linz/ intake runner grooves.

More work can be done with intake and exhaust runners, valve angling, modifying intake and exhaust runners to manipulate air turbulence.

Fuel Economy Tips » Blog Archive » Groovy Heads
Fuel Economy Tips » Blog Archive » The Stephens’ Carburetor
Fuel Economy Tips » Blog Archive » How To Go 100+ Miles On One Gallon Of Gas
Powre Haus » Cylinder Head Porting

[Jack's Dodge]

Here is the intake side of the head.

[RyanJ]

I'm aware, that the better the atomization of the fuel, the better the burn will be. I thought everyone learned that in 7th grade shop class when the teacher deomonstrated the effectiveness of raw puddled gasoline, VS atomized gas in a coffee can he hit with a blow torch.... The puddled gas in the can blew the lid off about 6" with a low pop. The atomized gas blew the lid 30 feet with a huge bang LOL. What you are failing to realize, is the fuel does not ride along the walls of the ports, in fact it never touches the runner walls since there is a boundry layer of air there......Some will touch the bowl walls, but not the majority.

The majority of suspended fuel follows the highest velocity areas of the intake port (generally in the center of a port) If you've never seen one, go try to find a picture of an intake port velocity map on the web. There are several good ones around. It's an enlightening picture of what is going on inside a typical intake runner. The areas of highest velocity will have highest concentration of fuel. If you don't believe that the majority of fuel never comes in contact with the intake port walls, if you have access to a flowbench, just spray some dykem into the airstream about 10-12" away from intake opening.... (Don't go crazy as it is not good for the blower motors) And then take look at intake ports after doing it and see where the "fuel" touches and does'nt. Or hold your shop vac over the chamber, & do same thing without as much risk to your bench motors, but the shop vac won't duplicate the vacuum pull as well.

The only time it really "touches" anything metal is the valve seat, the backside of the valve & chamber, & right around the valve guide boss, both on front & mostly on backside. Again, those areas are all the critical areas for "wet flow" The runner really has little bearing on the wet flow characteristics of a head, other than affecting overall velocity of the port. If you do the dykem test, pay particualr attention to the intake short turn & the dykem traces or lack thereof.....

Again I go back to, looking at what really big $ high end cyl head engineers are doing with their intake ports & intake port wall finish.... I will never able to convince anyone, I'm right. I don't need to.... Just go look at what eveyone else who knows ALOT more than I ever will is doing. Generally smooth finish......

The OEM's would kill for even small gains in efficiency & they spend more $ than anyone (obviously, they have spent hundreds of millions in R&D over the past 50+ years) researching cylinder heads, I don't see them doing anything too "trick" or unusual either in their intake ports. Some play around with swirl/tumble "vanes" in their intake bowls and that's about it. The chamber is really where the head is make or break from an efficiency standpoint. The wetflow itself, & then the re-distribution of the wetflow by the interaction of the piston top shape before the flame kernal develops..... basically the majority of raw fuel coming into a chamber ends up on exhaust side in a Wedge 2V style head, & you need to help "re-distribute" that fuel around the chamber before the fire for a more efficient burn.....

Again I come back to the time spent on valve seats & 3/4" below & above them will net 100X more power/efficiency gains than spending time playing with surface finish or "lines" in the runner walls.

Anyhow..... just my 2 cts.

[cj011]

Great info. I am sure there will be good discusion over it. What do you recommend or what approaches do you use on the seats?

[RyanJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cj011 Great info. I am sure there will be good discusion over it. What do you recommend or what approaches do you use on the seats?

Depends on alot of factors, chamber shape, valve diameter, valve shape etc.

But couple constants always apply..... Have the VJ done on as good of equipment as you can get your heads to. Mostly to control concentricity. Use carbide pilots, & good seat/guide machine. Ours are done on a Sunnen VGS-20. Very similar to a "serdi" except sunned uses a "dead" pilot where as a Serdi uses a "live" pilot. Which is better? Depends on quility fo your valve guides to be honest. Alot of high end head shops including Chapman Racing Heads use a Sunnen. The big $ shops that can afford it are using a Newen CNC. With a newen, you can set angle angle/width you want and a single point carbide cutter cuts the angles/widths to your spec. No having to have whole stack of different cutters for various heads, or blowing $ on cutters just to try something that may not work. But the Newens are over $80K. A Serdi/Sunnen is in $20-$40K range.

But just try to get your seat concentricity around .001" runout or less. That will help with not only seat/valve life, but also make more power.

Make sure the cutters used for doing the VJ are sharpened before use. Dull cutter will make mess of valve seats... Sharper the cutter, the sharper the seat angles will be. Which in turn makes more power. If you have to lap in the seats do it with very fine compound & lap as little as possible. Big $ race heads like on a Nextel Cup or P/S engine are not lapped after the VJ is perfromed.

As a general rule the intake seat itself does not need to be very wide. A .035" seat will be fine. Ex will need wider, like a .050" would be good for a Turbo Dodge motor. Top/bottom cut widths/angles will vary depending on head/valve.

Exhaust seats as a general rule just need a seat angle (whatever angle it may be), & the rest should be a radius above & below. To do an Ex seat CORRECTLY the bottom cut /throat area should not be round. It should be egg shaped.... Hand sanding/shaping the Ex seat can be worth large gains, in both airflow & power. Just make sure exhaust ports sound clean when flowing. I'd much rather run a 150 cfm port that sounds "clean" than a 180 cfm port that is turbulent. The 150 port will make more power.

On a low lift head like a TD head, I would think about running anywhere from a 37-42 degree seat angle. The shallower the seat angle the better the low lift flow & also the seat lives longer. But it hurts high lift flow, but these heads do not usually ever see over .500" You just have to be aware if doing low seat angle to leave sharp edges & watch reversion. If you get killer low lift intake flow, guess what? It likes to flow backwards as well.....ie reversion. & reversion is # 1 way to kill power.... Restrictor plate Nascar vaves (at least Ray Evernhams stuff), both IN/EX actually have anti reversion grooves machined into them. On the intake valve it is on the underside of the head, on the Ex it is on backside of the valve.

If I was doing an "all out" TD head it would probably have like a 42 degree seat. We go the opposite way on our high lift V8 Drag heads, we run alot of 50-55 degree seat angles. But the chamber has to be designed correctly to make it work. If you can't get a convex chamber wall, you won't have pressure recovery area & port may look good on bench (actually will look stellar up high) but will not make power on dyno.

But anyhow... just as some simple rules to follow for any performance TD cylinder head:

Focus on concentricity of seat

Use sharp cutters

Do not hand radius/break sharp edges on intake seats

Do radius everything on Ex seats other than seat angle itself, & make oval

Keep throat area around 89% of valve size on inatke, 90% on exhaust unless it is all out race engine

Don't run excessivley wide seats

Run back cut valves (angle depends on style of valve)

Leave bottom edge of intake valves razor sharp. Thin margin is good.

Wide margin & radiused bottom of margin on ex valves.

Don't use anything steeper than a 75 degre ebottom cut on intake seat.

Absolutely no "bowl hog", or "chamber hogs" EVER That is easiest way to destroy a head.

Use a good quality valve, measure runout on the valve.... Especially on used valves that are getting refaced.

Make sure guides are good. Want good tight guide clearances..... this stuff is 8 MM so you can easily get away with .008-.001" intake clearance. On Turbo Ex I would want at least .0015-.0017" Mine I will probabbly run around .0017-.0018

Use Good viton valve seal.

Those are just some good general rules to follow. Specific seat angle/widths will depend on head & valve size/brand.

I am far from the "say all" on cyl head's but I've been doing it long enough now, & have worked on enough high $ stuff to have fairly decent understanding of how this stuff works. We are all constantly learning.....

[Jack's Dodge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanJ I'm aware, that the better the atomization of the fuel, the better the burn will be. I thought everyone learned that in 7th grade shop class when the teacher deomonstrated the effectiveness of raw puddled gasoline, VS atomized gas in a coffee can he hit with a blow torch.... The puddled gas in the can blew the lid off about 6" with a low pop. The atomized gas blew the lid 30 feet with a huge bang LOL. What you are failing to realize, is the fuel does not ride along the walls of the ports, in fact it never touches the runner walls since there is a boundry layer of air there......Some will touch the bowl walls, but not the majority.

Do not take my post as an insult to what you know. I know you no better than you know me. Not easy to express the level of conversation over a message board Oh, and i had no such demonstration in 7th grade :(

Quote:

Originally Posted by RyanJ The majority of suspended fuel follows the highest velocity areas of the intake port (generally in the center of a port) If you've never seen one, go try to find a picture of an intake port velocity map on the web. There are several good ones around. It's an enlightening picture of what is going on inside a typical intake runner. The areas of highest velocity will have highest concentration of fuel. If you don't believe that the majority of fuel never comes in contact with the intake port walls, if you have access to a flowbench, just spray some dykem into the airstream about 10-12" away from intake opening.... (Don't go crazy as it is not good for the blower motors) And then take look at intake ports after doing it and see where the "fuel" touches and does'nt. Or hold your shop vac over the chamber, & do same thing without as much risk to your bench motors, but the shop vac won't duplicate the vacuum pull as well.

Again, do not take this as insult, but we are pretty close to saying the same thing; it seems to me anyway. I am not going to pretend to have any automotive professional automotive experience at all. Never a second spent in a class room or shop learning anything, save some here-say and stories. Field experience is what I know. If there is an idea, I put it together and see what happens. This is the part where I put the head on my car and see what is what. Why must I experiment on my only car

Thank you for your knowledge on this subject. Information will be posted as it developes.

[Jack's Dodge]

After looking at some pics of my neon head, fuel is not aimed soley at the valve seat.


This is after a few months of use before it was pulled for work. The dark area shown is where the fuel comes in contact with the head.


This is a sohc head.

[RyanJ]

Actually, you are seeing reversion...... ;)

Fuel does not stain ports black.... burned hydrocarbons do.

And please don't take anything I say out of context. Sometimes I say things & they don't come across the way I want them to in print.