I'm working on an 04 j32a3 engine and am getting ready to do some port work on the heads, upper and lower intakes. I've worked lots of GM ls1s, d16, and others, but never touched one of these especially an engine that has the exhaust manifold cast into the head.

What kind of gains can I expect and any parts that show higher gains than others when porting these?

Just to add this motor is going in front of a 5 speed auto in a car that should be a lot lighter than the stock TL in the end.

Thank you guys and tree I'll post up before and after pics!

 

mustang build!!!
awesome project!

you'll see decent gains from your port work!

 

Yup, lots of work ahead of me lol.

I have no exhaust at all, so I plan on making 2 4 bolt flanges to bolt to the head end see just what size pipe I can go with....right now the open is 2.25-2.5 primaries. If I can only go with 2.25s, then I think I'll merge into one 2.5" pipe and one Dynomax VT muffler, but if I can fit 2.5" primaries off the head I'll probably run dual 2.5"d to the back with an x pipe and two VT mufflers

 

^you'll want to become friends with Sonnick

https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-performance-parts-modifications-112/j30a5-dyno-me-855798/
he's made great power and is running a similar setup as far as exhaust mods and porting and polishing

 

Will do thank you! I thought my search skills were pretty decent, but I haven't been able to find much of anything on these a3 heads.

 

P.s. we replace the cats with 2.25 straight pipes called pre-cat deletes

http://rv6performance.gostorego.com/...v3pcd-223.html

 

you're talking head work, which is rare on that motor. Even Sonnick to my knowledge hasn't touched his heads yet - he only PnPed the IM/lower plenum and port matched them.

For NA, one of (if not the only) person here who has had heads done is Gerzand. I'm trying to acquire his j32a3 heads right now, actually. He went full tilt on them with 3 and 5 angle knife edge porting. The intake side of the heads isn't going to do much without reshaping - you'll get better results on the exhaust side.

I don't know if anyone has done heads by themselves, though, and measured any real gains. Typically you would include a cam regrind with head work like that, and also PnP the IM/runners to make use of the flowing heads.

on a 5at base TL and working on the stock heads, throwing out wildly assumed numbers, I'd say you could probably gain 40-50 whp on top of what it already makes if you include cams and PnP and some tuning.

definitely needs tuning though.

 

atlas.46 has port and polished head, lower runner, and IM. He also bumped the compression on his accord from 10:1 to ~11:1. So that should give you an better idea how much the gains are to your TL.

Just waiting for him to install his clutch and break it in before the next dyno.

 

I doubt if the car will ever see a dyno, and I'm probably going to keep the stock cams in it since it will be only street driven and no mods to the auto tranny... The biggest gains will probably seat of the pants feel since the car will be about the same, or lighter than a stock Honda Civic.

I was looking at the heads last night and it looks like Honda did a pretty good job to start with so hopefully I can get in there and hog out the exhaust side near the flange, then just do some lighter port and bowl work to make them breath better.

My goals are a real strong daily driver that she can get in and drive in an weather year round, dead reliability, and great classic looks.

 

From what I've been reading deleting the intake runner butterflies might be a good option too. It looks like I might be able to gain some top end power without losing much of anything down low...that would let me open up, clean up and smooth out the inside of the upper intake to gain plentium volume.



Well, just for shits and giggles I might have to checkout one of the dyno days around here with it lol

 

Atlas gained 20whp with just the head work HOWEVER his a/f was off AND he had a slipping clutch! So if you do all of this correctly and at one time I could believe a minimal 40whp gain.

 

Don't delete the butterflies. You will regret it. You lose low end all the way from idle until it goes into vtec

 

So thisaznboi88 your saying pull them out, do all the grinding and polishing, then put the butterflies back in to keep more low end?

 

Also, just curious does anyone know exactly what the cam specs are as far as lift, duration and lsa, in and out of Vtec?

 

I swapped for the 3.7L manifold and delete my butterfly valve... Azn, what would you say is the big difference between the two?

 

Sonnick lost like 10-15 wtq from the removal of the butterfly.

 

I never had it dynoed, but I built a super short runner intake for my old D16 (about 2" runners) it worked great up higher in the rpms, but was a dog in the lower range, so it does make sense.

 

I got a little work done tonight on the upper intake, and lots done on the lower runners!
Kind of hard to see in some of the pics, but I was able to really open the lose runners up.
I also did a little grinding in the heads and upper intake, but you will need to wait on those pics

 

Hmmm, well guess that part is going back in haha.

 

I pulled the butterflies out of my intake to port it all out, but I think I'll bolt them back in after I get it all cleaned out, just to be safe.

I was able to take a LOT of material out of the inside of the upper intake. I'll take and post pics here late tonight after I get it all cleaned up.

 

Be sure to put them in tight! maybe use some high temp glue to help keep them there. Someone put theres in and the screw backed out and the engine ate it.

 

With supporting mods I would agree. I wouldn't be surprised to see 30-40whp from the intake manifold porting/larger TB (ZDX), and ported heads/runners. The J32a3 is already 11:1, so that will help as well.
This. Under 4K I lost 10-15whp and wtq. Car felt completely different in the lower RPMs after the 3.7 manifold. I can understand the argument that I am comparing a ported stock manifold/stock TB/stock runners to a bored 3.7 TB/IM/ported runners, but the actual gradient of the graph(s) are almost identical before/after 4K, just more or less HP/TQ.

 

I guess throwing Vtec in with the butterflies does make sense....it honestly really is like having to completely different engines, one for low rpms and a completely different on for high rpms.

 

What did you use to port those?

 

FYI, this is my before/after 3.7 manifold/TB dyno. Note the huge loss between 2800-4000 RPM. The only other difference is the 'dip' around 4200 RPM when the butterflies open up is gone once they're deleted (obviously). Not worth it to delete them IMO on a daily driver.

 

1 aluminum round nose cylinder
2 steel round nose cylinder (keep it well coated with grinders grease)
3 round white stone
4 round 80 grit sanding drum
Then finish off with
5 round 120 grit sanding drum

I can post pics of the bits and drums here later

 

That would be great.

 

I still have a little more work to do on them, but here are some before and after pics

 

Wow, you took a lot of material off the head where the precats are.

 

It's going in a 66 Mustang, so no cats, or pre cats

 

I would be very careful of the short side radius. It's hard to see how much material you took off but I usually just clean it up without taking any serious material off.

Also, on the exhaust pictures it's hard to see but what is the material blocking the left cylinder from line of sight? Is it EGR or something?

Looking at the intake bowl area with the carbon deposits you can literally picture the flow and how swirl is introduced assuming the carbon is the low pressure area where the fuel has no chance to clean.

I saw flow numbers on these heads before, years ago. I don't remember the numbers but I remember the intake side flows more than my aftermarket and ported heads on my GN. I want to say they bested the LS1 heads too.

It's too bad no one has done much work on these before, it's always nice to know where the water jackets are when porting. At least you don't have to worry about pushrod holes.

Looking forward to the end result and possible dyno. If this is going in a Mustang, what transmission is going behind it?

I also wonder if changing the exhaust side of the cam would be beneficial. We know the vtec intake lobe is pretty aggressive considering it doesn't fall off at all to redline. I wonder if there's any power in a slightly more aggressive exhaust side especially considering they were chosen with a 1200 cell catalytic converter hanging off each head in mind.

 

I've worked on a number of Ls heads, I have an lq4 based built 408 stroker in my 04 GTO.

It was really nice when I started working on them because one of my friends dropped a valve on one of his motors and gave me a cut out head section so I could exactly where all the oil, water and bolt holes went.

I did exactly like you said, I just cleaned up the short side radius....I've never really seen much gain from cutting more of them out. Most of the material I took out was on the long side and around the valve guide...then of course the whole end of the exhaust port and shaped it into more of a collector.



The egr port is on the outside edge of the end runner and you can't see it in the pics, it is just the angle that I took that shot at I think.

 

You should show before and after pics from the same angles.
That way people can see your work a little easier.

 

Top left corner is one of the standard sanding bit from a porting kit
The next few across the top are aluminum cutting bits,
Across the bottom are steel cutting bits that have finer teeth (you need to use "grinders grease" with these on aluminum so they don't clog)
The last one on the far right is a homemade modded shaft for the sander drum kit in the second pic (I took two of the bit shafts and a peice of brake line, then welded them together)
Third pic is my strait and 90 air tools

 

Thanks. I don't have any extensions to get that deep.

 

That's what she said

 

Ok that literally made me lol...and drool a little too lol