No matter who manufactured your cylinder heads, no matter if they are new, old, cast iron, cast aluminum or CNC-carved billet aluminum, one final process is crucial to coaxing them up to their full performance potential – PREPARATION.  Several manufacturers produce good cylinder heads and continually research ways to improve them.  Technological advances seem to pop up almost weekly.  Total Flow Products closely follows these developments.  We constantly test and analyze new head designs to keep our preparation technology in step with – or one step ahead of – the manufacturers and our competition.  With new heads delivering more and more power, by design alone, our preparation technology pays off where races are won by thousandths of a second. 

Cylinder head preparation can be likened to the time-honored process of “blueprinting,” in which engine components are carefully measured and machined (or replaced) to be identical and to match the most advantageous dimension in the engine manufacturer’s, or the rule book’s, specified range. 

In cylinder head preparation, though, experience and skill rule over specifications.  Granted, aftermarket performance heads are generally better designed, and manufactured to closer tolerances, than mass-produced “stock” heads.  However, even those tolerances can vary or the design may be only close to ideal for your specific application.  Experience identifies factory valve seats that are too deep or improperly installed, valve face angles (valve job) that aren’t ideal and tolerances that aren’t consistent.  Experience prescribes the amount of metal to remove or add to achieve the optimum size and shape of an intake port, exhaust port or combustion chamber.  Skill enables Total Flow Products to implement improvements and precisely duplicate (“blueprint”) them throughout the cylinder head.

“Porting and polishing” is an old term that was synonymous with preparing a cylinder head for use.  One only needed a hand-held grinder to enlarge and smooth cylinder head ports so more air could flow with less restriction.  Whether done properly by a professional, or poorly by an amateur, didn’t matter.  The process itself, not the result, was considered “trick.”

Today’s “trick” preparation process is “CNC-porting.”  All that’s needed is money enough to buy a CNC machine.  But a CNC machine doesn’t guarantee that heads will be properly, or even consistently, prepared.  Through our free inspection service, we see a lot of “trick” CNC-ported heads.  Often, they are virtually unchanged from their as-cast or as-machined state or they are over-machined (probably for appearance).  In either case, too little or too much metal was removed and the heads can’t produce their potential power.  Just as with the old hand-held grinder, there are professional and amateur shops selling the CNC porting process.

Preparation is sometimes viewed as a process for brand new heads.  But that’s a misconception and shouldn’t be a reason to give up on your existing heads.  An underperforming engine could be just a victim of inadequate cylinder head preparation or a total lack of proper preparation.  Any cylinder head, in the box or on an engine, is a candidate for proper preparation.  The brand “B” heads, at the start of this article, are perfect examples.

And cylinder head preparation isn’t just for racing.  The original, matching-numbers head on your classic muscle car can be prepared to the original factory specifications (“blueprinted”), so the car will perform better than new.  Note that Total Flow Products will always counsel against extreme porting of classic heads.  As “car guys,” we understand the value of hard to find original parts.  Plus, we usually know of suitable aftermarket heads that produce more power, unmodified, than modified original heads.  Our advice… if you want more performance from your classic muscle car, store your original heads in plastic bags and bolt on a set of Total Flow Products-prepared aftermarket heads.  They will probably cost even less than modifying the original pieces.  

If you’d like an accurate, FREE* evaluation of your current heads, send both in, along with the intake manifold.  We’ll analyze the combination, review what you want done and report back with our recommendations and cost estimates on what you need to do.  We’ll then gladly perform the work or return the parts to be worked on elsewhere.  To learn more about this offer see inspection service.