ported/polished/wrapped oem manifolds webpage

[ride5000]

teaser pic...



rest of writeup...

http://ken-gilbert.com/wrx/porting/p...t_manifold.htm

haven't had a chance to put them on the car yet... this week i hope! i will try to get before and after datalogs.

comments appreciated

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[cdvma]

Looks like very impressive work, Ken.

That is going to be one fast spooling machine...!

[garie]

great writeup. Very thorough with many pictures. The best writeup w/ pictures on pp the stock headers so far.

how long did that take you? how many man hrs?

great job man...and how does is compare to before? can you compare it to aftermarket headers?

[InfamousDX]

That musta been a lot of man hours! But it looks great

[steve]

Good work ride5000.
I just P&P'd my exhaust manifolds, and the results are great. Well worth the many hours to do it right.

[djerickd]

awesome!

[SleepinRex]

nice ken. Good to see a fellow p&p'er doing some good work. Love how pretty manifolds get... lol




U also may wanna try a dremel or rotozip with a flex shaft. They allow me to reach farther than even my 7 inch mandrel will allow me to. lets me reach all the way down.

[03WREX]

That's a very good write up and I give you props for doing all of that yourself. I am curious on what type of gains you will see from this. Please keep us all updated.

I'm sure this was a work in progress but can you estimate about how long this took you to do? Definitely post this on scoobymods if you haven't already.

[kennyvb]

ken, good work. let us know how the tape holds up. you didn't remove disassemble the turbo before porting?!?

[jamesfacts]

I really have to do this before my motor goes in.

I think Mike and I are going to attempt this sometime over the next week at Jon's actually. I hope it comes out as nice as yours. Are you recycling the gaskets?

[distorto]

that looks awesome, but why the work on the outside?

[CMJ]

Originally Posted by distorto

that looks awesome, but why the work on the outside?

Polished metal retains more heat than a rough surface would.

[LiquidForce]

I ported and polished mine when I had them off but I didn't bother with the outside. How long do you think before rust sets in and returns them to the original state?

[needmoreboost]

Wow that is some great work right there. Makes me wanna take off my manifold and go at it with my dremel and aluminum carbide bits.. at least as far as it'll let me (which isn't very). Time to buy a flex shaft from sears.

[strohausii]

noob question: is it true the manifold's holes are smaller than the actual ones on the head? To increase the velocity? I thought I had read this early on before the wrx came.

[ebeck]

Is this completed? There is alot of meat left to get to the gasket seal ring as far port matching goes.

[SleepinRex]

Originally Posted by ebeck

Is this completed? There is alot of meat left to get to the gasket seal ring as far port matching goes.

i know it may look that there is a lot of the meet around, but trust me that this is completed. Ive done near 10 more since this, and all have been within 1mm for some gasket play. ill post anot pic with teh gasket on.

[booimaghost]

I have read that a good P&P on your stock headers can actually be better than a aftermarket down pipe.... is this true?

[SleepinRex]

check out my thread "port and polish madness" i have a bunch of impressions on there. EVery single customer so far has been very pleased with the gains, especially for the price.

[ride5000]

sorry it took so long to get back to the thread... prego wife has a cold, adding insult to injury.

# of hours is on the high side. if i had to estimate i'd say about 10-12 solid hours. on the other hand, although time consuming it isn't incredibly hard to do. as a result lots of that work was done with a good buzz on! so that makes it go by faster.

if you want to undertake a similar endeavor, make sure you either have the tools or lots of extra time. for example, i could have just ground down the mounting tabs, but that would have taken a LOT longer than cutting the bulk of them off with a sawzall w/metal cutting blade.

sleepinrex's interior finish looks a bit better than mine. i stop after the 80 grit flap wheel. i could have cleaned up the interiors for some of the shots--some flap/stone/iron filings make it look like the surface isn't smoothed, but it is.

because of the high finish, in sleepinrex's picture you can see the infamous "flat spot" @ bottom left that's been discussed in other threads. i wish that casting was done differently, but it is what it is.

americanyouth, i am planning on reusing all gaskets but the touchy one--the up pipe to rh manifold gasket. that one is new. but the 2 manifolds to heads and the 2 manifolds to x-over will be reused. if it was an aftermarket manifold/header i would be more worried, but this is oem so you know it fits, and the gaskets are pretty good. plus i am cheap.

liquidforce, i have no idea how long it will take to rust. keeping water, espcially salt water from the roads, off of the cast iron metal will make a big difference. consider how your manifolds look compared to your turbo exhaust housing. hopefully the foil will go a ways towards this. also, the main purpose was to make a wrap-friendly surface so that it didn't get chewed up on sharp edges. doing a little forensic analysis on my currently installed non-ported manifolds may tell me how it will weather. they've been on over a year, with no shields or barriers of any sort... just exhaust wrap.

thanks for the comments folks... i'm glad people are getting something out of it! i will be updating as things progress.

ken

[ride5000]

oh yeah, kennyvb, i certainly DID disassemble the vf23 before working on the housings! i did the inlet and outlets of both hot and cold sides, then put it all back together. i am going to flush out the oil and coolant passages before i put it on.

also, i would ABSOLUTELY tell people to get a spare manifold so that you can take your time and get it right--no use being rushed trying to get your car back together and having to cut corners in haste. take your time and have fun with it.

finally, i DID get a nice shard of metal in my left eye. luckily it was not in the cornea, but i did have to go to the emergency room to get it removed. i didn't even notice until the next morning. it didn't fly in there (i ALWAYS wear safety goggles) but it dropped onto my lash after taking off the goggles and in brushing it away i pushed it into my eyeball. be careful folks--especially with those carbide bits in high speed rotary tools... they make nice little iron splinters.

[Davenow]

Originally Posted by booimaghost

I have read that a good P&P on your stock headers can actually be better than a aftermarket down pipe.... is this true?

None, did you mean aftermarket header?

If so, then yes, ported stock manifolds work WAY better than aftermarket headers.

[Call_me_Tom]

Ken,

Nice write up. I love reading and learning from your stuff.

[ride5000]

put the manifold on last night. did a few runs with a utec log going before i took off the old manifold. still burning off the new wrap smell.

i'll have pics later, but i found some things interesting:

my old x-over pipe was wrapped and unshielded. of all three parts, the x-over had the best wrap coverage, and the LEAST amount of corrosion and rust. it also had the least amount of soot on the inside... most of it had been burned to a nice grey.

the wrap coverage on the old cast parts was much less complete than that on the x-over, mostly due to the heatshield mounting tabs all over the place. they had a moderate amount of surface rust and flaking, and had much more black soot on the inside. despite the rusting there was still plenty of meat left on the castings.

i interpreted these characteristics as being indicative of the insulating qualities of the wrap... in the case of the xover, it was thinwall tubing but it was wrapped with excellent coverage and as a result got nice and hot during operation. this burned off interior soot and looks to have kept exterior moisture down as well. there was VERY little corrosion on that pipe.

on the cast manifolds, the temperature looks to have been cooler. i think this is due to the less complete coverage with wrap, as well as the heatsink properties of the mounting tabs hanging in the breeze and keeping the core metal temp cooler. as a result the interiro soot buildup was more evident as well as the corrosive action of trapped moisture in the wrap itself.

in other words: a partial or hack-job wrap might be much more detrimental to pipe longevity than a complete wrap, or no wrap at all, due to the lack of sufficient temperatures to boil off all moisture. essentially you end up with the worst of both worlds.

more info and pics later.

ken

[wrx plus]

Very nice.