For the uninitiated the basic reason why you would want to do this is that it helps exhaust flow and turbo spool up which if you’re into going faster is a good thing. If you’ve already got the tools it’s also basically free. Porting is removing or grinding away material, polishing is just as it sounds.
7:00am: My protégé Alex shows up and will be around for most of the festivities. Alex and I are basically the same person in different wrappers so we get along well even though he’s 10 years younger than I am and in College. We have this kind of weird mentorship thing going and he helps me out on more than a few occasions because he likes to learn new stuff.
Alex and I setup shop on the side of my house in the Boat/RV driveway because it’s close to a hedge where we can wash away all the filings and it’s got lighting for working at night. He broke his car down last night as well so we’re ready to dive in. It takes us about a half hour to setup everything and break the headers down to start grinding away. About 5 minutes in it became clear that my compressor wasn’t up to the task. Grinding out cast iron, even with a carbide bit, blows goats.
Alex goes home and gets his dads air compressor which is twice the size of mine. Grinding goes much better after this because we can switch back and forth between compressors as the other charges up. This makes me happy.
Since I will be wrapping the pipes in exhaust wrap I need to cut off the points where the OEM heatshield attaches.
I ran out of cutoff wheels for the last one so I had to gring the thing down with the carbide bit. This is not fun.
12PM: After four hours of work and a double cheeseburger break Alex leaves. He needs to “spend time with his girlfriend”. More on this later… I on the other hand am already married (read: old and stable) so I keep grinding away solo.
6:30PM: I break for dinner with the family and take a shower. Here is what I looked like at that point. Notice the extreme amount of metal shavings on my arm. The picture doesn’t do it justice. You could barely see skin. After the shower I looked like a feline friend smelled liquid catnip in my veins and went ape shit up my arm. My legs and feet are also covered with shards. When I restart grinding later during the evening I put on fishing boots and long pants rather than the shorts I was sporting earlier.
7:30PM: After dinner Alex comes back after breaking up with his girlfriend. (“This isn’t working. You’d rather spend time working on your car than with me!!!!”) We get the rest of the polishing done pretty quickly. Now it’s time for ceramic painting, which I realized too late we should have started WAY earlier. Like this morning earlier. Here's all the bits hung up for painting:
We used VHT 2000 degree flameproof header paint. (A year later and it's held up well). If you haven’t used it, VHT Flameproof is awesome paint but it takes a long time to cure (3 hours) and you have to keep turning the heat on and off (30 Minutes on heat, 30 minutes cooling). My wife will skin me if I put the parts in our real oven so we use my grill and another small oven in my basement. As I continue the heat cycles a new day approaches…
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