Anybody ported 882's?

[zac]

Doing a super low-buck sbc build for a farm truck. Last usable set of heads I have are 882's unfortunately. I can see the obvious stupid stuff to deal with on the intake side, but the exhaust ports look truly terrible compared to 461's, 462's, 487's, 441's, etc. Looks like you could take a lot of meat out of there, but these are obviously different castings. I have a junk set as well that I'm going to grind on basically until I hit water. Just wondering if somebody else out there has tried this and has some info to pass along before I get started. Thanks.

[GRX]

I would not bother with a set of those personally. Anyway. First thing you should do is make sure the center exhaust seats are not cracked. 882s are good for that. If you have no experience in porting do some reading. A lot of reading. Removing material in the wrong spots can ruin flow characteristics.

[Marv D]

Agreed. MANY a decent SBC heads have been RUINED by the home hobbiest that bought a bag of tootsie rolls and a die grinder and started making guesses of what they needed..
The bone stock 882 flows right about 209 / 142 with a smallish 151cc port. Compare that to the 218/137 of a set of stock 462 castings with nearly the same intake runner. (measured on the same SUperFlo 600 bench as the 882's.)

Point is,,,The 882's are nearly the same. and even BETTER on the exhaust side. The 8cfm Intake cfm isn't really a HUGE thing when talking a motor that isn't going to see 6000RPM on the farm!
Instead of dinking with the ports at all,,,,, As our machinist expert has already advised,,, I'd have them checked for cracking , and I'd flat mill em 0.060" to try and bring the chambers down to ~70cc. And call it a day.

But that's just my 2¢ It spends really easy these days.

[Jrainman]

Just watched a vid on youtube where a shop took a 50 dollar pair of 882s and put about 1,500 in machine work in to them to make the point of the aftermarket heads offer great value for price , after the dyno pulls the 882s with 1,500 in head work made 70 less HP then a out of the box $ 1,200 pair of aluminum dart heads.

[Black71Shorty]

I agree with Marv D. The 882's are and can be good heads on a budget. I had a set on a 4bolt .030 over 350. A friend of mine who use to work for drag racer Gene Snow done a little bit work on them for me. When I say a "little", thats what I mean. He told me that those heads are pretty good stock but just need a little clean up to flow better. Basically what he did was port match everything and do some polishing on the exhaust side real good. he left the intake side the stock rough casting as he said it would help promote the fuel to atomize better as it entered the cylinder. Then kept the same stock size 1.94 intake valves and put in the slightly larger 1.60 exhaust valves. I was running a COMP 268 cam with performer intake, stock 750cfm Quad, and full length headers. All I can say is that was one SWEET engine. It had plenty of torque down low to pull a house down and done great till about 4500-5K rpm. Wish I still had it! So, IMHO I wouldn't hesitate to run them, just make sure you have them checked for cracks and don't go crazy with the porting.
Goodluck!

[zac]

Thanks for the input guys. I need to give you some more info, I only hesitated at first because it tends to get me massively trolled. I am building this engine out of stuff I have laying around. I should have less than $150 in it. I do this all the time, I know the risks. The next stop for these heads is the scrap yard. I wouldn't even consider using them if any of the many sets of heads I have were at all usable as is. I have the intakes done to my satisfaction. But those exhaust ports are what I would call passive EGR. My main concern is how and more importantly where these castings were lightened. I want to really open it up around the valve guides to match the heavy heads, just not positive about how much meat is in there. I have a couple unusable 882s and the plan is to just grind the s$%! out of that area and see what happens. That is why I was asking if anybody had any insight and personal experience grinding on these heads.

[Tom]

I don't have insight but I fully support the at home mods, especially since you have a junk head to practice on. Your not spending money so why not?

[GRX]

Good to have a set of unusable heads to experiment on. Just remember casting shift. Not all heads will be exactly the same. In general refrain from removing too much from the port floor. Just blend into the seat. Helps to remove lip on the valve by grinding a 30 degree back cut on both intake & exhaust valves.