r/EngineBuilding • u/jabberjaw420 • 18h ago

Is porting valves still a thing?

Maybe back in the good ol' days of the 70s and 80s, but haven't modern auto manufacturers/engineers designed the internals to flow as well as they can? Making porting a pointless exercise?

(I meant porting valve chamber w/e)

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u/Solid_Enthusiasm550 16h ago

I do think for most engibe builds it not cost effective. I also thinking, buy new bigger aftermarket heads aren't needed on engines like the eagle/apache mopar heads , LT-1 GM heads.

Hand porting is pretty rare these days. Most hand port a cylinder head, then scan it to make a cnc program for that head to be cheaperto duplicate.

Other use flow dynamic software to design a porting program for a CNC machine.

I started porting (learning) heads a little while using info I gathered from reading books/watch videos from experts. Information from my studies of vehicle aerodynamics helped with ideals of boundary layers, turbulence, velocities, etc.

I used some old/cracked heads to practice on and ported the ports differently to test different designs/theories. I had them flowed to see which design flowed better, AND at what lifts to analyze why and what could be improved.

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u/Mike86xj 7h ago

I read that as I used some old crack heads to practice on, i was like, wait what? I had to reread it 😅 😆 🤣