I'm thinking about trying my hand at porting my TB and plenum myself. Does anyone have any pics they can share of finished products from either porting they have done them selves or the ports done by some of the professional shops around? Also, has anyone tried porting themselves and found it to be just way too difficult or it caused problems with their car? I feel confident in my mechanical ability to do most any mod but I've never done any porting before, so I'm curious what I'm getting myself into. Thanks.
Questions on home porting TB & plenum
- Thread starter Voice of Reason
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ported TB/plenum
There are no "tricks" to this porting, like there are when porting heads and blowers. Just have to know when to stop before you break through the casting walls! A die grinder with a carbide burr tip made for aluminum and dipped into oil every several seconds will rough it out, then follow with some sanding wheels to get the finished product. Easy? No. Do-able? Yes.
There are no "tricks" to this porting, like there are when porting heads and blowers. Just have to know when to stop before you break through the casting walls! A die grinder with a carbide burr tip made for aluminum and dipped into oil every several seconds will rough it out, then follow with some sanding wheels to get the finished product. Easy? No. Do-able? Yes.
It's doable, but I wouldn't personally do it unless I had a surplus of time and wasn't afraid of making a mistake. LOL!
It is very easy. If you just take your time you will be able to do it. Get a long (~6" or longer) aluminum carbide burr and use an air-powered die grinder. Also, I don't believe it's worth the time to do any additional smoothing after the grinding. Even if for some reason you broke through you could easily repair it with epoxy. Took me about 2-3 hours for both TB and plenum. DON'T go crazy on the TB.
I may be wrong here, but isn't a lot of the gain from porting the plenum due to filling (welding) the areas around the bolt recesses, and straightening out that area ??
Hoss3430 said:
Interesting... I was able to find some before/after pics from another website but they don't look like this welding has happened. The only bolts that seem to be a major issue are the two sticking down on the top of it. If the bolts were cut flush is there that much left to fill? Or are there other bolts causing the flow restriction?
There are large recesses on the plenum, on the outside, around the studs that attach the plenum to the supercharger.
The two IAC bolt bosses that hang down right behind the TB are removed completely necessitating the shortening of the IAC screws. Use a little sealer on the threads when reassembling. The other cast in recesses can be ground down quite a bit for good gains, but, yes, there are further gains with them welded from the outside and then really hogged out inside.
Has anyone shown any data proving these 'further gains'?
I've been thinking about how to fill the bolt recess area (or divot) without welding and I'm starting to think thet good ol JB Weld would do the trick. Just grind off the paint in the divot area, apply the JB Weld, wait for it to cure a couple days (or more if you want to be really sure it's cured) then go to town porting the inside exactly how you want it. In the end you can even polish the exterior where you JB Welded and then paint the whole thing so no one ever knows. I looked through JB Weld's website and it will withstand up to 500 degrees, which it should never see, and it does bond to aluminum. If done correctly I don't even think there's a chance it could break off and get sucked into the blower. So, does anyone see a downside to doing this? Has anyone had any bad experiences with JB Weld?
I would not suggest the JB weld idea. I personally think there is extremely minimal gain by even filling in these areas at all. Not worth the time. Just port it out.
Well after some thought I want to get the Tb & Plenum ported. I see on the link that he has them for 130 shipped. Where can I get one?
I home ported mine while I had an accufab tb on my Cobra. It is not even close to the Accufab and I really dont think there would be any significant gains. I went back to the stock unit because of the cruise control linkage issue with the accufab. It doesn't hurt anything to home port but would I do it again? Nope.
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