TriniGT wrote:Are you saying you all have a flow bench? Also looking for someone that can replace valve guides in an aluminum head and reem them to suit, please don't tell me Baldwins because they afraid to do it, the supposedly biggest machine shop in Trinidad.
Yes, I have a flow bench, as well as the means to measure velocity through the ports. As ,many know, big flow number are useless if you sacrifice velocity, you can end up with a head that actually performs worse than stock!
As far as the other head related work, the tooling is the problem. While the tools are available, they are expensive and most local machine shops just are not willing to invest. I've visited Baldwin's shop, and while it may be the best that we have locally for valve angle jobs (
for the time being), his equipment is by no means "State of the art".
I've started off with a narrow focus, in a small way, and I'll expand slowly once I get enough business to buy more tools! I bought my equipment because like you, I was just not satisfied with the level of science and accuracy available locally for porting.
My next foray will be in the area of angled valve seat cutters.
By the way, the correct procedure to remove the guides is to heat the entire head in an oven to about 250 deg, then tap out the guides. The new guides are then pressed in and reamed to size. Run-out tollerances are very very small for performance heads which is probably why our local guys are afraid.
Sorry I don't have better news, but my advice would be to re-evaluate if the guide change is really necessary. Perhaps you could just get custom valves with slightly larger stems, then just ream the present guides, or just use a better head to start from.
Richard.
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