what is port and polished and how does it make you go faster?

 

porting is when they take your heads and shave a little bit of the metal off the ports to open it up more for increased power.
polishing is just exactly what it says. just polishing the ports for remove burs and stuff.

 

Corupt,

Port: To smooth out, align and somewhat enlarge intake passageway to the valves. (Auto Mechanics Fundamentals, Stockel/Stockel The Goodheart-Willcox Company, Inc. 1990)

Heads that have been polished, have the passageway to the valves polished to a very smooth finish.

Regards

Jean Marc Chartier

 

is there a kit or some way to do this at home? i want to get a better 1/4 mile withouth having to drop 4 grand on a supercharger or nos?

 

I suppose they probably make tools or bits for a drill to do it yourslelf. I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself though. It's probably best to take it to a performance shop and have them do it if you've never done work like that before.

 

corupt,

To add to danB's post, if you don't know how much material to remove or if you remove too much you could actually harm the performance. If you wish to start a safe thing to do, would be to just smooth out the surface irregularities. Removing the heads will be quite a chore too.

Regards

Jean Marc Chartier

 

If you're having head work done not only would you likely port and polish, but flow. I can't talk to the equipment, but it basicly allows you to polish and "flow" the heads. You work the "tunnels" until you get optimum air flow.

Now, the next piece might be discouraging. If the search feature is working yet, try doing searches on it. Someone posted some good data on what happened with they worked the heads on a late model 5.4 I think it was. It didn't get them what was expected. Basicly a lot of time and effort down then drain with no positive performance gains whatsoever.