Polishing and porting heads

What sort of price is reasonable for this?, any recommendations?

Cheers Rich

I'll try and have a look at my invoice for mine but I'd say for a decent job your looking at £350-£500 with new guides and so on.

Wherever you get it done, make sure they have a flow bench facility or else it ain't worth parting with your money....

Cheers for info, maybe a future upgrade, one of the punto gt owners has recommended somewhere up but its miles oop north


My rebuilt engine has gone back in the Uno this week, its not been professionally ported , ive just had a go at cleaning up the castings on the head, manifold, exhaust elbow etc, should help a bit

The bottom end was balanced , honed etc and with a new piper fast road cam, T25 etc hopefully should go even better. any tips of running in? ive read it should be run in fairly hard to seal the piston rings

When I ran my current engine in I did 500 miles running in gradually increase the revs as the miles increased and sometimes using full throttle low down in the rev range to help bed in. I think the trick is just not to be too gentle and also not thrash the life out of it as it will get too hot and cause damage. You can read so much on this topic but mine seems to be good bedding it in like I did. I also bedding it in with a mineral oil as with a synthetic they would never really bed in properly.

Be careful about 'polishing' ports and combustion bowls in the head. Polishing, as in a totally smooth mirror finish, is NOT a good idea. Many, many engine tuners will tell you this as you want a slightly rough surface to promote swirl and the better mixing of air and fuel. Porting, as in matching ports, flowing and removing casting flashes/ irregularities IS a good idea. As Unograle says though, unless they have a flow bench you will never know if the porting work is any good.

Basically, you get what you pay for. True porting/ gas flowing won't be cheap, however, you will get a printed report from the flow bench showing you the gains that have been made in air flow before and after the work. Porting, as in matching the ports and removing casting flashes, you can do this yourself with a mini grinder and stone attachments. Might even be cheaper than getting someone else to do it too.