I have a spare intake manifold for my ZC and was considering getting it Extrude Honed until I found how much it would cost ($300+) to have this done. But ignoring cost, would doing this be worth the hassle or what kind of gains could you expect to see from this on a motor with stock internals and the typical bolt-ons (cai, bored tb and intake,fpr,cam gears,header,hi-flo cat and exhaust)? Has anybody done this or had any experience with this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Just do it by hand. Get a handheld electric grinder and remove all the casting irregularities and port match to the gasket/head.

 

Just do a quick clean up with a die grinder and match the ports. By extrude honing the intake you increase its flow capacity - however by doing so, you lose velocity from the bigger ports. The gains will be good if you are using turbo, nitrous, or have a very built N/A motor (cams, compression, headwork, etc). Otherwise, extrude honing will only deliver top end gains while losing alot of torque down low.

Take a look at this data:

http://www.spswebpage.com/tech/a5220vs5232.html

While i realize this is not a honda (its a saturn) the results should be similar. Lots of low end loss for a little top end gain.

Ryan

 

Ah, I've been wondering about this myself. So rule of thumb if you're going N/A is to skip the extrude/hone and go for port matching/deburring?

 

Thats the rule of thumb, however i cannot make a blanket statement for all cars.

I bet a Nissan Altima uses a special intake manifold and is different from all other vehicles and requires special preparation and uses special parts that share no commonality from any other production vehicle

RJ

 

You could always get a few of these honeing bits and do the runners yourself. At least smooth out the seams.

 

Those look funny. What are the tips made out of?

 

Not sure exactaly....lead sandpaper *****? You can get them in different sizes and grit levels.

 

LOL.

 

where can u get those?

 

Thanks for the input guys. When I was looking into this I went to the Extrude hone plant in Irwin, Pa. and got the guy I talked to to take me on a tour of the place and kinda got the "inside" scoop on how this is done. After a while I started thinking I could do this myself and like I said, I was just wondering if it would be worth the hassle. I still might give it a try. ****, If it works maybe I could make a buck or two by undercutting their prices by like half or something. I dunno, just a thought.

 

I imagine they have a patent on the process....

 

O.k., yeah I guess that is a valid point ,but how much does a patent cover? The end results? Surely not. How you obtain those results? Doubtful. As long as you dont copy the process that they employ, Maybe. But then again a person could just sell finished products instead of marketing the process itself and possibly avoid the whole patent issue. I dont know but can anybody shoot this down or for that matter would anybody be interested?

 

If you sell a product using the same process as extrude hone, and they have a patent on it, then you cant use the same process. Its not just the finished product thats covered.

Ryan