03TundraTRD

Has anyone done this on there 3.4 heads and intake manifold.
I plan on getting the upper and lower part of my intake manifold extrude honed and the exhaust ports ported and polished as soon as I find a reliable shop. Do you guys think I am on the right track or just save up for a TRD S/C.

MTL_4runner

Do you really want me to answer that for you?

03TundraTRD

UUH Yeah

MTL_4runner

Do yourself a favor and don't waste money on unproven stuff.
The best bang for the buck.....BY FAR....is to get a supercharger.

The stuff you are talking about is for racing engines....not street.
If you do extrude hone, say goodbye to your lower end torque.

CTB

Just curious, what is "extrude honing" and why do you lose low end torque because of it?

alltrac165

Howdy everybody,
I'm new to the board and I'll make this my first post.
First, to qualify myself, I work part time at a shop that specializes in racing head modification and development as well as thermal coatings.
Extrude honing is a process where an abrasive compound is pumped through a tube under pressure. The grit can be controlled to remove a lot of material or a small abount.
Advantages are that it can reach places no other method can, it's relatively inexpensive, and you can achieve reasonable results if done by someone who know what they are doing.
Disadvantages are you really can't control it very well. Sinces it's just a putty under pressure, you can't make it remove material here but not there, or just take out that bump without making a dent in the other side. It presses out equally in all directions at all times while removing material.
On a lot of these long runner manifolds, however, there's little other choice unless you want to cut it up, port it and then weld it back together.
Personally, I would use it on the manifold if it were a long runner type, but not on a head.
Now then, should you work your manifold and head? That's up to you and how much you have to spend versus your final power goals. Supercharged or not, anything we can do to reduce pumping losses in the system will get us more air in the cylinders which usually means more power. Of course there are limits to how big to go based on rpm, engine size, any cam limitations, etc. Bigger is not always better. Like someone mentioned, if you go to far, you lose port velocity which kills off low rpm cylinder filling which kills off low end torque. Any engine that benifits from porting while N/A will also benifit while supercharged. Compressed air=heat. For example, if we are making 7psi at the outlet of the supercharger, but only getting 5 or 6 psi at the cylinder, we have not only lost pressure but added more heat than was necessary to get 5 or 6 psi. If we can reduce the pumping losses so that more of that pressure reaches the valve, we will make more power. On the exhaust side, porting can be more important. An engine designed for natural aspiration has a specific intake to exhaust flow ratio. Once you boost the intake, you now have proportionately more exhaust to expel from the cylinder. A ported exhaust port with good headers and exhaust sytem can make a supercharged engine a lot more powerful across the entire power band.
So it really depends what your long term goals are versus how much money you have and whether or not you feel like pulling those parts off to be massaged. I haven't seen the 5VZ head personally so I can't vouch for it's design, but most see improvement if properly ported.

CTB

Sweet, thanks for the info

03TundraTRD

alltrack165
So it is ok to extrude hone the intake manifold and open up the exhaust ports when I become supercharged or do while I am N/A.

alltrac165

You can do it in either order, but your porter MUST know what your going to do with the engine. If you stick with NA it's gonna be a different port job than supercharged, so you need to be sure what you're going to do with the engine.
BTW, if you are still looking for a shop to do the head work, I'll put a shameless plug in for where I work now.
See www.replikamaschinen.com for pics and phone #'s.

its2slo

holy b18c5, i think i got goose bumps. is that thing getting a bottle and big turbo? you guys do sweet work

alltrac165

(blushing) Why thank you....