Worth porting Accel runners?
Picking up an intake system next week consisting of Edelbrock ported & polished intake, plenum cleaned up on the inside and stock Accel runners.
Question is: the runners are virgins (untouched) and the plenum was ported on the "inside" and removed material blocking airflow. Is it worth PORTING the Accel runners and plenum to match? My porting skills are, well I have none, so I'd have to send this one out. What additional gain with porting vs. dollars spent? I'm probably going with a super ram later after I can swing heads/cam, but this will have to do for now. BTW I'm also adding TPIS L/T headers and a little exhaust work along with this intake upgrade.
Here is a shot of the plenum, the pics I've been seeing are siameese ported.
Actually port matching is really quite easy and can be a satisfying job.
Lay a piece of cardboard onto the plenum side, punch some holes and install a few plenum bolts to hold the cardboard tightly in place. Then cut out the openings for the plenum side to form a template.
Now install this template onto the matching runner flange and scribe the openings onto the runner flange. Remove the template, use an Al cutter bit in a Dremel tool to rough out the opening and a coarse sanding drum to finish up. Lay the template in place and touch up where needed.
The idea here is to flair the runner openings from the large plenum opening size to the stock runner diameter. Just don't cut so far into the runner flange as to reach the runner tubes.
That's all there is to it. Take your time, enjoy the job and feel the satisfaction of having done it yourself.
Yes, they are the large tubes. I don't know if I trust myself on porting although I do have a dremel. I remembering you saying you had some pics of this process, if you could shoot them to me, i'd appreciate it!
What I have is plenty of pics of is the lower runners where I matched em to the siamese intake base, though those likely won't help much.
You might first lay one of the runners onto the side of the plenum, insert a copla bolts to hold it in place and sight through from the other side of the plenum to scope out the setup. Hey, maybe the match up is pretty close already. In which case I would not spend $$ on having them ported.
If there is a large mismatch, just take your Dremel to the upper runner flange as indicated above. This job isn't critical like pocket porting heads. If you get a runner flange open a little farther than the plenum opening it won't hurt at all. In fact that is far better than having the runner flange opening smaller than the plenum opening. So if the opening isn't a perfect circle, it isn't critical.
Thanks for all the tips, when I get them next week, I'll scope it out and see if I can tackle this one.
BTW, what gains do you see from this intake set-up and then combined with LT headers????? I'm hoping to let her breathe a little easier!






