Well ive decided that Ill port my intake and my heads. with zero, I was planning on disasembling myself and bringing my heads and intake to a speed shop. Ive gotten two estimates so far: 1- 750 per head and 250 for the intake
2-approx.750 for both heads and 250 for the intake

Does this sound in your opinions like normal pricing? I would appreciate your opinions on this.
I just might buy an old finished engine just to practice porting.

 

Lowest Ive heard to port 2 heads (for a full port job) is $750, but most charge $1000-$1500 for a nice job.

I could only find one person who would touch a TPI base and they wanted between $7-800 to do an aggressive porting that went all the way through...THey are a PITA. Wound up doing it myself.
One other person ofered to "clean it up" and do a port match for $350 which is worthless, youre better off leaving it alone unless you go all the way.

Youll get what you pay for with porting, anyone who really knows it well wont do it for cheap.

 

For just porting the intake and exhaust runners of the heads, you are probably on target at around $750 for both. However that won't include new valves and seats or guides. Additionally it may not cover unshrouding the valves either. You need to find out all of the details from your machninist to see what that includes. Not all port work is the same for a given dollar amount. I did a considerable amount of research on the topic and I'm a cheap SOB. I didn't want to pay someone a bunch of money for a job that seemed easy to me. Well after all the research and looking around at local shops, I cam back here and looked again at Elliot Port Works, and decided to let him take care of the whole enchilada. I wound up paying about $2,000 for ported heads, larger valves, complete valve job and skim the head surfaces, ported the intake and custom ground cam using my cores. The flow numbers are outstanding and I'm looking forward to cranking it up sometime early next year.

 

What is. "with zero, I was..."? With zero? These are cast iron heads aren't they. With a minimum of $200.00 to $300.00 in a valve job, reconditioning, plus parts, those #624 boat anchors aren't worth the $1000.00+ investment. You can buy much better aluminum heads for a little more, or even better, than you have now, new cast iron heads for less. If you are on a tight budget, and If you can do your own match and pocket porting, it is possible to get a little more out of those castings. Otherwise donate them to the local marina.

The problem with hiring out such labor intensive jobs as porting, is that the cost adds up faster than the results. Even at the bargain basement rate of $50.00 an hour, five hours of work will just barely get your intake manifold match ported.

"I just might buy an old finished engine just to practice porting." Instead of an "old finished engine" whatever THAT is, check at the machine shop or the bone yard for some cracked and otherwise useless head castings to practice on.

RACE ON!!!

 

x1000

This one port alone (on the left) took me well over 5 hours to do today and theres still more time to be spent til its "done".
Only way to make a buck at it is have a CNC cranking it out, advertise servies "cheap" while paying some kid $10/hr, hand him some tools and hope for the best.

 

That's some serious work...

 

Nice work too!

 

Do it yourself, you will save a lot of money, and you will get more satisfaction when you are done. You will also educate yourself while doing it, and the next time you do it, it will be a piece of cake. I agree that you should try it on another intake incase you get into trouble. I also recommend a GOOD high speed die grinder, and a GOOD set of bits for aluminum and cast iron. The aluminum bit should have wide flutes, so it will resist clogging up with material. A good set of bits is quite expensive, but will save you a lot of time. I think the last aluminum bit I bought was around $40, but it has seen a lot of service, and still looks new. Just don't lend it to anyone, because if they use it on cast iron.......
I agree with CFI about paying someone to port the stock heads. The performance gains are probably not worth it. If you pull them off, they make great Christmas gifts as paper weights. You can match port them without pulling them from the motor via the cotton ball method, but you will most likely hurt your back, and you will have metal everywhere. Cast iron replacements are cheap anymore, and you can buy them with most of the port work already done. Keep in mind, bigger heads, usually require a more agressive cam. I think you said you have an 84? Porting the intake alone might give you what you are looking for, for now.
Most importantly, read, read, read, before you do anything. Lots of free information and tips on this forum and the CFI injection forum (you have a Xfire engine right?), along with illustrations.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. Yes my vette is a 1984 with crossfire injection. Well im not necesserally looking to race it just have some good power for weekend rides. So would I see a good difference just by porting my intake?

 

That is what I have done. If you have the heads off, matching the head ports to a gasket would be a good idea. My heads have never been off and therefore aren't matched. The intake manifold is THE restriction on the L83.

RACE ON!!!

 

I'm going to be proud to have Ron's hand ported heads & intake on my car when he's done with them

 

YES! That is what I did to my engine. If you will have the heads off, matching the head ports to a gasket is a very good idea. Since my heads haven't been off, mine aren't matched. The intake manifold porting, alone, accounted for 2/3 of a second or more in reduction on my 1/4 mile times.

RACE ON!!!

 

When I first got my 84 and didn't have the ability to port. Everyone I talked to wanted some bucks for it. So what I did was just bought the Xram, dollar for dollar it was cheaper. I'm not saying run right out and buy the xram. Now I have and extra intake and the ability to port. So what I'm doing is porting the cfi intake. I've got half done already and have at least 8 hours into it.

As far as heads go
you can buy the dart ss heads here..http://www.aeroheadracing.com/, they are cheaper than porting the stock plus they flow better

 

How much is your time worth?

 

Good point, and considering full port job and modification to a Crossfire intake properly would probably take a professional 3 to 5 hours, $250 is a good price, if the machinist knows and/or cares about what he/she is doing. Doing a job like this yourself, you will probably pay a little more attention to detail, and do a more meticulous job. Also I doubt many machinist get requests to do a port job to a Crossfire intake, and probably aren’t too familiar with it. I'm not just talking about gasket matching. But if you get someone that has done them before, and does good work, $250 is a no brainer if you don't have the free time.
$750 to port each head though, machinist #1 seems to be on some type of narcotic.

 

$750 was the lowest I have heard quoted for porting a pair.
I paid someone close to 2k years ago to do a set for me. Thought it was high at the time, but looking back it was worth it.
Took him two months of eves. of doing it by hand and a lot of time on a bench.

I dont know how anyone could do a full port job on a crossfire or anything else in just a few hours' time if I understood you correctly.

 

On an aluminum intake, with a high speed die grinder, this burr can remove a huge amount of material, in a short amount of time. It took me 5 hours to do my Xfire intake, including removing the EGR channel. I would say I spent about 3 hours port matching, removing material as far as I could reach into the ports, while keeping the transition of the runners smooth and even in size. The other 2 hours was spent up top. I probably pulled the runner openings back 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch, and opened them up quite a bit. I did not spend much time polishing, as the Xfire is a wet injection system, and the porosity of the casting probably helps aid in the atomization process. But I did remove all of the casting bumps and edges I could find. Bigger heads and a cam would probably warranted spending more time on it, but with the stock set up, I think I reached the point of diminishing returns for now. I took my time with it, with a couple of breaks in between to warm my frozen hand from the pneumatic die grinder freezing it.
The burr that is pictured is $79 from SnapOn. I think I bought mine a little cheaper from another tool vender.
I wish I took some pictures. I have a spare Xfire intake that I am going to use for a 383 I am building, when I port it, I'll post some pics.
The last set of cast iron heads I ported were a set of BB Merlins. I know I paid extra to have them CNC'd when I bought them, but still spent roughly two days or so on them. Very long and boring process, that I know I could have spent more time on, but it was enough to run my Malibu 9.76 @ 136 MPH.
Don't get me wrong, having only ported half a dozen heads and intakes, I know I'm only a novice at this, just throwing my opinion out there. I know there is always more room for perfection.