DIY Heads

Alright, I know someone around here by now has taken a die grinder to the 08+ heads by now. Mine are pulled off the truck and I want to open them up while they are off, nothing extreme, I plan on matching the gaskets and polishing the ex side.

Pretty sure the term is gasket matching, the intakes look like they could be widened around 1/8th of an inch and the overall shapes cleaned up a bit to match the intake man. the chambers I was planning on simply cleaning all the carbon off and buffing to a shine to help prevent future carbon buildup. The exhaust side where my headers bolt up appear to have ALLOT of material that could be removed as the ports on the side are an oval at the last half inch or so and could be turned into a circle to match the headers, I would like to simply open them up and smooth out any ridges and polish to a shine.

I realize this will take sometime but thats not an issue, I am concerned about getting hot spots or weakening the overall integrity of them as they are aluminum and I don't know how much meat is in them. If anyone could give me some insight or post pics it would be greatly appreciated. Also, I will plan on taking pics and posting them as I go.

all i gotta say is if you have never done it dont practice on your only set of heads, get some junkers and practice so you dont scrap your good set. also you have to be careful to keep all the ports relatively the same size and shape so they all flow the same.

Are these rectangular port or cathedral port?

intakes are cathedral, exhaust are shaped like a circle with the top and bottom cut off, so rectangular with rounded ends...

I know its a bad idea to practice on these but I have quite a bit of experience with a die grinder in removing, shaping, and polishing metal, so I'm confident there. I've done extensive research on head work and I also got a chance to talk to the guys at West Coast Heads yesterday, they were surprisingly extremely helpful, rather than hold their info proprietary one of the guys basically told me where they remove material and where not to remove material. Thanks West Coast Heads.:beerchug:

The only real material I will be removing is going to be the ceiling of the exhaust ports to make them circular, the rest will be simply smoothing edges.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/pics-...-port-job.html

Thats awesome, exactly what I'm plannin on doing. I guess I didn't find it in search b/c I was looking up "heads". Thanks man.