MachineMan
Remove Before Flight
Hello,
I bumped into a guy driving a project Dart GT and all those old memories came flowing back.
From 1979 to 1984 I was living in Auburn, Washington...
Just down the hill from SIR, (Seattle International Raceway), I met a guy at work, Richard Gadberry, and we became best of friends.
He was a Ford guy back when he was into it, but each and every one of his friends were Mopar guys!
I fell in with this crowd and Richard eventually bought a Barracuda and fixed it up pretty nice without spending a lot of money.
Having a strong background in precision machining and precision grinding came in handy with these guys, all they ever thought about was their cars, and what could be done on a budget that could make it better.
One of those guys was a local Mopar A body legend.......
Kelly Thomas
If there are Mopar A body guys here from the North West right about now they are nodding their heads.
He was "the" A body guru that always had the answer when someone had a question.
It was he that asked me to solve a problem that had plagued small block Mopar guys from day one.....
Getting the heads of a small block Mopar to flow more like the heads on a small block Chevy.
You guys know the deal, the push rod location causes there to be a hump in the intake passage, where as on the Chevy it is a straight shot.
Sure guys had done some porting, but breaking through was always a danger and there was no warning to speak of before disaster struck.
My idea was to ream the push rod clearance hole to a clean .500, nothing much comes out, but it makes the hole more uniform and straightens it up a bit.
Then I took 1/2" copper tubing, put short sections in the lathe and put a medium knurl on the tubing, bringing it up to about .505 / ,506 or so.
Now that I had some knurled tubing to work with I cut the sleeves to length and deburred them.
Next using a .50 cal rifle cleaning brush and acetone I got the reamed bores in the head as clean and dry as possible.
I made an installer on the lathe, nothing fancy, basically a long nosed punch with a shoulder.
Next clean the copper sleeves well with a bush and acetone.
Next, mix up a batch of JB-Weld and apply to the copper sleeve getting good coverage.
Slip the sleeve onto the installer tool, line things up and start driving the sleeve home.
Clean up the excess JB and check to see that the sleeve is just below the surface of the head top and bottom.
Move on to the next, and next, etc.
24 hours later, make a coffee, find your safety glasses, locate ate little box you keep all your carbide burrs in, and get comfortable,... it's time to create flow.
I will not go into the dynamics of porting, you guys know the score.
"But"
This mod gave the porter something he never had before......
A warning.
When you see the color change from cast iron to copper you ease up, you know where you are.
A perfect job is when you are finished, and in the intake passage you clearly see what looks like a copper "surfboard".
Of course, if you break through a sleeve, you drill it out, pass the reamer through for good measure, clean up everything, and tap in a replacement.
I never broke through one, I watched like a hawk how wide the "surfboard" was getting and didn't rush, when I got tired, I stopped.
Richard told me he broke through one once, he just replaced it and let it sit over night, and finished it the next day.
The heads Richard and I ported in this fashion were a great improvement over what you could get out of heads that had the intake passage obstruction, the casting bulge to accommodate the push rod clearance hole.
I was accredited with being the first to come up with this practical solution.
It had not appeared in any magazine, any article, or any tech notice, and these guys had stacks on top of stacks of info, it's all they did,
they were Mopar Maniacs..... LOL
If anyone here knows of the group of guys I'm talking about, or you're from that Auburn / Kent ,Wash area, please speak up.
I bumped into a guy driving a project Dart GT and all those old memories came flowing back.
From 1979 to 1984 I was living in Auburn, Washington...
Just down the hill from SIR, (Seattle International Raceway), I met a guy at work, Richard Gadberry, and we became best of friends.
He was a Ford guy back when he was into it, but each and every one of his friends were Mopar guys!
I fell in with this crowd and Richard eventually bought a Barracuda and fixed it up pretty nice without spending a lot of money.
Having a strong background in precision machining and precision grinding came in handy with these guys, all they ever thought about was their cars, and what could be done on a budget that could make it better.
One of those guys was a local Mopar A body legend.......
Kelly Thomas
If there are Mopar A body guys here from the North West right about now they are nodding their heads.
He was "the" A body guru that always had the answer when someone had a question.
It was he that asked me to solve a problem that had plagued small block Mopar guys from day one.....
Getting the heads of a small block Mopar to flow more like the heads on a small block Chevy.
You guys know the deal, the push rod location causes there to be a hump in the intake passage, where as on the Chevy it is a straight shot.
Sure guys had done some porting, but breaking through was always a danger and there was no warning to speak of before disaster struck.
My idea was to ream the push rod clearance hole to a clean .500, nothing much comes out, but it makes the hole more uniform and straightens it up a bit.
Then I took 1/2" copper tubing, put short sections in the lathe and put a medium knurl on the tubing, bringing it up to about .505 / ,506 or so.
Now that I had some knurled tubing to work with I cut the sleeves to length and deburred them.
Next using a .50 cal rifle cleaning brush and acetone I got the reamed bores in the head as clean and dry as possible.
I made an installer on the lathe, nothing fancy, basically a long nosed punch with a shoulder.
Next clean the copper sleeves well with a bush and acetone.
Next, mix up a batch of JB-Weld and apply to the copper sleeve getting good coverage.
Slip the sleeve onto the installer tool, line things up and start driving the sleeve home.
Clean up the excess JB and check to see that the sleeve is just below the surface of the head top and bottom.
Move on to the next, and next, etc.
24 hours later, make a coffee, find your safety glasses, locate ate little box you keep all your carbide burrs in, and get comfortable,... it's time to create flow.
I will not go into the dynamics of porting, you guys know the score.
"But"
This mod gave the porter something he never had before......
A warning.
When you see the color change from cast iron to copper you ease up, you know where you are.
A perfect job is when you are finished, and in the intake passage you clearly see what looks like a copper "surfboard".
Of course, if you break through a sleeve, you drill it out, pass the reamer through for good measure, clean up everything, and tap in a replacement.
I never broke through one, I watched like a hawk how wide the "surfboard" was getting and didn't rush, when I got tired, I stopped.
Richard told me he broke through one once, he just replaced it and let it sit over night, and finished it the next day.
The heads Richard and I ported in this fashion were a great improvement over what you could get out of heads that had the intake passage obstruction, the casting bulge to accommodate the push rod clearance hole.
I was accredited with being the first to come up with this practical solution.
It had not appeared in any magazine, any article, or any tech notice, and these guys had stacks on top of stacks of info, it's all they did,
they were Mopar Maniacs..... LOL
If anyone here knows of the group of guys I'm talking about, or you're from that Auburn / Kent ,Wash area, please speak up.
