Mr. Max

About to take my car to Carolina Auto Masters for Cam and header install and I am thinking that while I am at it I should have my heads ported. I may just want to buy a set of Dart Heads but I figure for less money I can get a reputable shop to Port mine. Any Ideas

JerriVette

I think Texas Speed TSP ported Heads with the dual valve springs are around a grand...

If it were me? I'd go for their inexpensive ported heads with the appropriate dual springs for the specs on your cam.

Their prices are excellent and beat local porting jobs imo (for the most part)

Its like a grand or there abouts for their ported and built heads shipped...

Z064FUN

I know or two vetts with MTI ported heads. One is an LS6 the other is an LS2. Both cars run great!

zo6vetteman2003

Primedia magazines like Chevy High Performeance, GMhightechperformance, Hot Rod, and Car Craft all offer great feature articles on heads, porting and flow numbers. I read a ton of material every month. Buying expensive heads doesn't always translate into more power. I invested $1000.00 in mine total. This also includes milling them. I went on ebay, and bought a set of stage 1 ported LS6 243 heads. ($770.00) The stage 1 ports were 215cc/80cc, and use the same size as stock valves that are known to provide excellent flow. I took these one step further, cleaned up the ports, dropped the floor of the intake port and polished them. I also understood that opening up the D port outlet on these heads is a tragic mistake. Work to the exhaust runner and bowls can be done, but opening up the D shaped exhaust outlet results in a loss in flow velocity, dropping torque, and ruining the head's overall flow. I took them to a local shop and had them milled. This resulted in a 62cc combustion chamber, or 11.0:1 compression ratio. I reused my sodium filled valves, that is a plus in the weight savings department. When I added the FAST LSX 90 intake manifold, I port matched the intake to the lowered floor of the intake ports on the new heads, and added the LS2/LS7 throttlebody. I took it back to my tuner to have it dyno tuned and the stock 40K clutch could not hold through the torque peak at 4800rpm and started slipping filling the shop up with smoke. It still made over SAE 440rwhp at 4800-5000rpm where it starts to make horsepower from there on. So I don't have any firm dyno result yet. I since added the SPEC stage 3+ clutch good for 850rwt, and need to bring it back for firm dyno results. You don't have to spend alot of money to make power. Being somewhat resourceful helps. I was lucky to already have a cammed ZO6 that had alot of good parts in it to start out with. Relying on my local shops to get the rest of job done just adds to the satisfaction.