Reasonable cost for porting

[Seppi72]

I have several L6 heads and I'm going to use one of them on a stroker build. I want to get the head ported and polished and don't know whether to farm it out to a person accomplished in this process or take the time to learn how to do it myself (probably learning on a broken head and then going to work on the desired one).

If I were to farm it out, what would be a reasonable price to pay for this?

Alternatively, how many hours would it take for a novice-to-middling "porter" to do an entire head?

I'm sure several members have gone down both of these routes and hope to benefit from those experiences.

[Zforce]

The calibraited feel comes from years of experience,what I mean is if you are going to take a grinder to it let someone who has done a few.Especially if he does not have a flow bench to check his work.It really is best to let a pro with the proper facilities do it right the first time.My mild street prepped E-31 cost 1100.00 ten years ago,so ported and polished today I would quess about 2-3k.But as I have said before opinions are like A-holes everyone has one good luck.

[ozconnection]

Building a stroker L series engine is a great idea but it does cost quite a bit of money to do. I'm assuming that you've already done some research into how your going to build your engine?

Stroker engines are known for their excellent torque production. This is an inherent mechanical issue due to the new combination of bottom end parts. What you haven't mentioned is what you intend doing with your new engine? Street, race, drag, rally? All of these engines are tuned differently, so each combination works best for their intended application. That especially includes the head.

Porting a head (which one will you be using?) can enhance or detract from your intended purpose. For example, a polished and mildly reworked head is all you'll need for a street engine, hogging out the ports and reworking the head chambers with bigger valves etc, costs heaps and is more suited for motorsport than for a street car.

Having said all that, I would take the head to an experienced Nissan workshop and tell them what you're building and how you're going to use it 'most of the time'. That way, you'll be pleased with how it's running 'most of the time'. Once again, decide first how you're going to use the car, then build that engine to suit.

Cheers!