DIY 3vz-fe full port & polish teaser *56K beware

[Toysrme]

Dirty Lexus, poor baby aint been washed in two weeks. You can see where 1500w of 10" Kicker 2004 L7's have destroyed the right tail light seal and now it has condensation inside too :'(

[Ratko]

You just doing the lower intake manifold?

[Toysrme]

Well for those of us that read, this is a teaser thread, and it says full port and polish.

Throttle body to heads...



Just j/k ratko!

[Your Uncle Moe]

Originally posted by Toysrme

Dirty Lexus, poor baby aint been washed in two weeks. You can see where 1500w of 10" Kicker 2004 L7's have destroyed the right tail light seal and now it has condensation inside too :'(

You should be glad you got a lexus.

[Toysrme]

Double posting 'cause I want to.

Give me a few days minus even more setbacks and I'll do a partial write-up on it.

Here's the list of supplies you'll need:
some tape, a sharpie and a haynes manual if you're going to do it LoL!

Full set of ratches & sockets. I used 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2" drives 10,12,14,17mm sockets along with a braker bar, and LONG metric wrenches tearing my engine down.
Penitrating oil, i.e. wd-40'ish stuff.
I suggest two-three cans of engine cleaner/degreaser and or carb/TB cleaner.

I used a combination of air die grinder and Dremel.
You will want a varriable speed (5,000-35,000rpm) CORDED Dremel WITH the flexi shaft. If you don't have a flexieshaft, or you have a battery Dremel, please stop now...

Part #255

Two stainless steel brushes #530

Two 5 packs of #414 felt pads

One pack of #422 tiped felt pads

Three-Four "Fat tip" Grinding stone #952

Two 80-grit "flappy wheel thingies" #502


If you don't buy/have the holders for the pads it's #401, and should come with one pad on it already.


Notice that I did not say get the dremel polishing compound. That's because I hate that crap. I used the same Mag/Alu compound I use on wheels when I detail cars. That's up to you.

Just a quick note to anyone doing this without an air grinder, or "suitably big rotary tool". It's up to you if you want to use the cutter bits on metal. If you do you're going to be blowing a lot of money on them because they don't last long. Be glad we're working with weak Alu.! I used grinding stones and they did what I needed them to very well. IMHO if you're using the correctly, they're not going to "load up". They eat thsemselves down so they don't "load up".

Anyone with a die grinder needs a suitable STAINLESS STEEL wire brush, and two grinding stones.

Rough costs for the dremel suff:
$25 Flexie shaft.
$2.50-$3 per 5 pack/single bit
$7 per flappy sanding wheel

Now, I'm going to get asked why I have two flappy sanding wheel thingies instead of cheap drums. That's because cheep drums are not going to conform to anything we're working on. Not only that I found that even on flat surfaces I would go through a 5 pack of sanding WHEELS to 1/2 of the use of a flappy sanding wheels. They just don't last long on metal.

So if you don't already have a corded varriable speed dremel, just save $250 more than you're about to spend and let a pro do it AND give you a valve job at the same time!

They're useful... Get two, you could also get two 80 grint and one 120 grit if you really want to smooth before polishing! Any good metal polish will do. Hell it's going to burn off the heads anyways (not the Intake Manifold up)

We are also going to block off the EGR ports as there is no reason to polish anything when it'll all get burned up and caked on in a week of driving. You'll need some RTV sealant.


One more thing. I *highly* suggest you know how to work on your car before diving in. So far IMHO anyone that has wrenched around on their car before can do this with help. *Anyone* can atleast clean, port & polish from the throttle body, intake air chamber/ACIS, and Intake Manifold. If you can work on your car 6 hours a day, you'll need a week. If you can't do that, you better have alternative transportation for the next two weeks because you're going to need to split things up alot.

There are also some things so hard, you'll need another set of hands helping.

Anyone with pissy nieghboors or signifigant others is going to know how bad they get when they hear atleast 3 days of dremel/air grinding work. Anyone that can port everything to the extint I did in 3 days of 8 hour work get's a medal also!

(I won't get into details, but on an electronic fish scale, I ported my Intake Air Chamber, ACIS and runners on it so much that it is MORE than a pound lighter. But I am hardcore, and wanted to go extreame! Yall shouldn't shave more than a 1/4 of a pound out of that on a 3vz-fe.)

[es250nut]

Originally posted by Toysrme

So if you don't already have a corded varriable speed dremel, just save $250 more than you're about to spend and let a pro do it AND give you a valve job at the same time!

Are you saying "if you don't have the tool, don't bother buying it, just use that money to pay somebody else to do this"?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

Gawds Man! I think I'd rather risk buying the dremel and screwing it up myself rather than trying to find some semi competent to do it for me. (I love my tools, always need more)

Maybe this would be a good excuse to make a toutorial video.

[Toysrme]

One more post for now... If you plan on doing the full thing, you might want to keep $140 usd on hand to buy THIS if you need to.

I have no idea the quality of these gaskets, but m head gasket was blown anyways so I had to have them. $140 aint bad for the entire engine gasket set, but I can't really tell you the quality... Obviously I'm not on the road yet!
Just keep $140 in the bank, cause some of these gaskets are just not saveable, or in condition where you wouldn't want too.

[Toysrme]

es250nut I am kind of saying that. The reason is that when I was buying bits around town, I found it hard to just buy the Dremel. It always came in big kits with 40-70-100+ pieces.

The Dremel is the king of tools. I've sued them constantly since I was a little boy with a billion projects. Trust me in that at some point, you will use every bit you buy in a big Dremel package.
What I don't want is someone to go spend $200-300 in parts, when around my part of Alabama you can get a descently good port and polish jobs for $300 done. $400 with the valve job.

I figure everyone has a Dremel, or needs one so I'm posting this. Otherwise I'd just say hey look what I did, here's my gains on my GTech Pro Comp, yall should figure out how to do it too.


*Edit*
My running tab so far is around $250, but consider the fact that you have to drain all your coolant, change your oil afterwards (i would!) that I am fulshing my tranny fluid during this process (Valvoline Maxlife ATF fluid is expencive ouch!) Spent $140 on the new gasket set because I needed it.

I spent the rest in the money under the guise of cleaning and prettyfiying the engine bay.

[Xevuhtess77]

wow it seems like everyone's doing port and polish lately hehe

as i posted in my thread, i started out using the aluminum oxide grinding stones for the porting (the stones pictured above), and i got really pissed off with it getting caked up with metal and just not being effective. i tried using a tungsten carbide cutting bit and that works absolutely excellent. i HIGHLY suggest people who are doing this project to use the tungsten carbide bit, it works soooooo well

i will be following up my project with a full p&p job, but i cant right now cause i need my car together for school. good work though, im really excited about all of our success in these projects lately

[jwa276]

STICKY THIS THREAD IMMEDIATELY!!!

(caps intended)

jon

EDIT: or upon the completion of the project

[Toysrme]

Sean, Xevuhtess77, is talking about bit #9901. I would suggest someone wanting to go that route try the #9934 bit.


I don't want to get into a big discussion of why I choose everything I chose until I'm ready to write up what should be done, where how and how much and I have experiance doing those parts.

However, for the sake of enjoyment! The reason I suggest the grinding stones is because their shape is perfect for porting and shaping 90% of the work that is going to produce most of our gains.

#9934 has that good shape also, I suggest someone try it.
I bought three to do the entire thing, and still have a good bit of my first stone left after doing major porting with it.

[Xevuhtess77]

i looked at the bit pictured above by toysrme in the store, but it looks a bit weak and would wear down quick and also looks like it would have the same caking problems the aluminum oxide grinding stones had. i still firmly stand by bit #9901, the tungsten carbide cutter. that thign is nasty!

[luisitol]

#9901 (carbide cutter) is a good tool but it also has alot more room for error than the grinding stone referred to above. That shape is perfect for porting. I tried doign somethign similar on a lower intake manifold of a 3000gt. Those grinding stones will do the job, especially if you have a die grinder.

[Toysrme]

The reason I wouldn't use a 9901 is because the shape doesn't bode well to all porting. It's fine for angles, but won't give as smooth of a curve that a bell shaped bit will.



Now to the point of this post.
Make sure you have a LARGE 14mm allen wrench to get the heads off also...

[Jzs147-RR]

Be very carefull the intake ports and all can be overdone easy.In some tests we made on some heads i am doing we actualy had to reweld some spots in the passages to increase velocity.This is not a recomended DYI job ask professionals because if you have better flow but totaly uneven its useless and might damage your engine in extreme cases.

BTW this is just a friendly warning hope everything turns out well.