A friend of mine recently bought
a set of Edlebrock aluminum heads for his 5.0 Mustang. So
he had this set of stock H.O. heads laying around. I was planning
a Cobra Intake swap and he suggested porting, polishing and installing
his set of stock heads at the same time. So that's what I did!
It turned out really well. I'll try to explain to you what I did
and how I did it.
The head at the top of the picture is the ported head. First I bought a set of high performance intake and exhaust gaskets
from Advance Auto. I laid the intake gasket on the intake side of
the head. The intake passages were almost as large as the holes in
the gasket so I knew there wasn't going to be much work to do here.
Then I laid the exhaust gasket to the exhaust side of the head. There
was quite a difference in size here. The gasket was much larger than
the passage in the head, so I knew this is where most of my work was gonna
take place. I took a black permanent maker and traced around the
inside of the gasket so the gasket size was marked on the head. I
then took a carbide bit in a die grinder and began to match the exhaust
port size to the exhaust gasket size. There was alot of material
to remove here. One thing to make sure is to try to keep the port
the same shape while grinding. But go ahead and port it quite a bit.
There is alot of room to port. There is an arrow pointing to the
air injection port on the picture above. I wasn't sure what to do,
so I ground it out smooth with the rest of the port. I've had no
problems with this. Make sure not to grind too much around the edges
so your headers will cover the holes when you install them. On the
intake side I ground a little material away all the way around and smoothed
up the port a bit. This turned out to be a really good upgrade.
With the intake and the ported heads, I could feel a major improvement
in power. I highly recommend this for someone who is looking for
a cheaper way out. There is a little more work involved but it saves
a heck of alot of money. The power gain is pretty impressive.
Keep in mind I put these heads on the same time I put on a Cobra intake.
If you have any questions about this process don't hesitate to email me.
willcp00@wfu.edu
The porting process took me about 10 hours...
Then you have to wash them really well, don't want any metal shavings
rolling around with the ol pistons!
