Also, a few of my friends ported their own Engines (Banshee's though) and, said it was easy. They modeled them after a Trinity Stage 3 port job they got a diagram for and, noticed great gains. Could I do my own porting too? I could bust out the trusty Dremmel!

 

You could certainly clean up any casting marks, open the runners a touch, port the boots to match the intake runners, unshroud the valves, and polish the chamber/exhaust. Leave the intake runners rough (80 grit) to keep the AF atomized. You've got to know where the water passages are in the Raptor head before digging too deep so concentrate on cleanup, not major flow changes. Different builders have little tricks they use to make the head flow differently, some like more low end and some port for more top end. If they flow tested them and posted the curve, you could compare one builder to another at different cam lift heights to get the right flow for your application. You will see gains by cleaning up the head but you won't gain as much as one of the big-name builders. 5 HP for less than $500, I think it's worth sending it out.

I've built a few V8 performance motors and had the heads of a 450HP (475?) Buick 455 ported by one of the two best in the Buick world, Jim Burek for Poston. The Raptor head I got back from Bob Craycraft for my Signature motor was of equal quality to my $1200 Buick heads although not as radical, the Burek heads didn't have much of anything left of the valve guides. I received a flow chart with the Burek heads but didn't get one for the Craycraft head. No slam to Craycraft, none of the Raptor motor builders do it as far as I know. After the porting, Craycraft applied a ceramic heat coating to the combustion chamber and top/bottom of my piston, keeps the heat where it belongs. I've heard that Trinity removes more material from the combustion chamber than others, that's a no-no for the high compression guys but might be OK for someone that wants to run pump fuel. I've heard that Sparks only epoxies and machines the heads on the "chosen" bikes. You'll wait longer for work from Sparks (2 years!) and there is some question about whether you'll get the same performance as everyone else but they seem to have a majority of the fastest machines.

The mix of performance, cost, turnaround time, and customer service keeps me a "biased" Craycraft customer.

 

2 years? To have porting done?Holy Shizzle, that is ridiculous!!! So what are CrayCrafts turn around times? How long could it take for a pro to port it? An hour? Hope it is quick or, i'll be Dremmeling my own!

So is porting worth it? Can i expect 5hp from just porting alone? Do i send them my whole motor or, just the head? what would you do?

What is a valve job? If i'm sending it out should i get one?