Anybody compare their ported intake pleunms to a non-ported one? I got mine today and it still has seams and lots of lumps and bumps inside of it... For what it costs I thought it would be slicker than eel snot....

 

Nope...welcome to the Extrude Hone! Best bet is probably to port match and knock down the large ridges and seams by hand and then have the thing Extrude Honed.

 

Here is what I would do...call the fellow you paid to do it. Tell him you are unhappy with the work. See if he tells you to send it back and he will make it right...at his expense for shipping.

If he does respond in this manner.......praise him for great service on this forum...and then let us all know when it comes back how it looks that time.

If he says...tough luck...it don't get no better...Let the folks here know so that we can keep the poor service in mind as we make future buying decisions.


And to answer your question...HELL NO it should not have bumps and crap in it...the point of the exercise was to smooth it out.


Rocks

 

Is there any gains from doing this????

i slicked mine out at work today, just for the he!! of it.

 

I really didn't see any gains from mine, but I suppose it didn't hurt anything. It does look pertier though...LOL.



Rocks

 

I have an extrude honed plenum and you can see and feel lumps and bumps inside it the remain from the original cast finish. To me, the idea of the extrude hone is to offer a slight increase the actual inside area of the plenum, as well as smoothing the rough cast surface. I felt that that I'd have been better off properly port match the plenum to the blower intake. The blower opening should be bigger than the plenum because any mismatch that lets the blower face "overhang" the plenum opening is going to hurt the flow more than the extrude hone will ever help it. While I'd like to see someone come up with a taller aftermaket plenum with a larger radius where the airflow turns downward, the stock piece must work fairly well or we'd never see the boost numbers people are getting.

 

Well I will take some pictures of both the stock plenum and the ported one for you to see what I am talking about...to much money for what I got...

 

well, for the sake of comparison, here are a couple of pics of the interior surface of my extrude honed upper plenum.





as you can see it still had some casting lines in there, but overall was much smoother.

if I did it again today, I'd probably hit the inside with a die grinder and sand paper wheels to knock off the big stuff and/or shape a couple of spots, and then have it extrude honed.

also, if I'm not mistaken, extrude hone has numerous different "grades" of abrasive media, AND, they can do several passes on any given part.

I'd be willing to bet that the various suppliers of EH'd upper plenums are just going for the lowest cost processing, meaning one pass. This makes sense as this allows them to offer the parts at the lowest cost.

however I think you could get a much better finish with more thorough or repeated processing of each part.

the Extrude Hone display at SEMA had some EXTREMELY slick looking stuff, but when I got my heads back from them, they didn't look near as finished.

not bad, mind you, but not as nice as they might have been.

also, I think the quality of the aluminum and the quality of the casting has A LOT to do with it.

just my .02

later,
chris

 

First, that Extrude Hone job Superfords posted doesn't look very good. You can do MUCH better than that by hand. Better yet, do a proper gasket matching and grind down all of the ridges and bumps by hand BEFORE sending off for Extrude Honing, then let them finish off the job with a mirror finish miracle.

As for gains, here is what I did...

I tore the entire intake side of the motor apart down to the lower intake. Cleaned everything up (oil everywhere, of course) and VERY SUCCESSFULLY re-engineered the PCV system to eliminate ALL oil ingestion while maintaining proper PCV function.

While I had it all apart, I figured that I could do a little porting.

I gasket-matched the components (throttle body to the upper, and upper to the blower inlet) right down to the tiniest fraction of an inch. Also smoothed the bend of the upper into the blower. The fit mismatch between components and gaskets (from the factory) was horrifying (better than 1/8 inch on average).

I smoothed all of the components, including removing the **** from the inlet side of the throttle body, grinding down the screws on the throttle blades, and grinding out the numerous lumps and ridges in the upper.

I then put a proper finish (ground out all of the raw casting pebble finish) on all of the flow surfaces of the throttle body (including knife-edging the inlet side), the upper, and the inlet side of the blower (a particularly terrible casting), with some smoothing and opening-up of the blower inlet. I put about a 100-grit finish on everything.

I've been to the track a bit since, and have a big database of pre- and post-porting data, with no other mods added or removed.

In identical air, I run right at 0.10-0.15 seconds and 1.0-1.5 MPH faster. Basically, 10, possibly 15 RWHP.

Best bang-for buck mod (aroud $8 per RWHP for me) going, very satisfying, stealthy, and you can fix the PCV while you're at it.

 

Here's some pictures of my welded/ported upper plenum which has also had short-turn radius improved.

http://www.svt-enthusiast.com/module...ess/01010859_G

 

Please describe the mods you made to the PCV system. I'm tired of knowing each mile driven is more oil on the intercooler!

 

Poor porting/gutting job on display....

Get some flap wheels and an accredited engineering education...

If you paid a single greenback for that job, you got, well, jobbed...

Nasty...

 

Kerno:

e-mail me at:

y2k_bolt@yahoo.com

...and I'll do my best....

Provide plenty of details or I'll prolly ignore...

 

Glad you liked it. I am an engineer and have 40 years experience building high performance engines, just not a ***** who thinks it has to shine to be pretty. I suppose if it was shiny it would be faster. Thanks for your scholarly input.

 

Thanks for the pictures and input guys...I'll port match the plenum to the TB and the Kenne Bell before installing. I see there is not much difference in my ported plenum and yours Chris. I should have asked before ordering but since I have waited 1 month to get the thing I may keep it and do the port matching and install the thing. Just a dang shame to spend 200 bucks and have so little to show for it...on the other hand I could call the vendor up and complain about the lack of luster his product has and send the lumpy bumpy 3rd grade casting back to him! Since I have another complete eaton and upper plenum to work with I may just port it out and give it a try...