I want to go into business porting cylinder heads and intakes. What should I charge?

2 Responses to “I want to go into business porting cylinder heads and intakes. What should I charge?”

1. Comment by richard b

   the first thing you need to do is get a hands on education on head porting. you need to know a lot about port shape, runner size, etc. as for tools, an air grinder with a variety of cutting tools and sanding rolls are needed for cast iron and aluminum heads. you also need a good flow bench to check your work. many times an amature head porter will start off well, but in the end come up with a port shape that actually kills power rather than enhance it.

   as for what to charge, that will be based on how much time you have in each head, and the going rate for labor in your area. most places charge about $65 per hour for labor. the average cost is about $800 or so to port a set of heads.

2. Comment by AsYLum dRiVeR

   To port and polish heads you MUST have and use a flow bench. It is the only way to see of you made any improvement. You can blindly go at cutting metal out of the runners but if you don’t know what you are doing you will most likely just destroy a set of heads. grinding out combustion chamber material will result in the loss of compression, and without a wet-flow bench you will be looking at destroying the head again. Price comes down to a balance between you making money, and being able to sell your service. (which has to do with demand, competition, etc.) There are training programs out there for things like this. Or you could go about it blindly, without the benefit of a hundred years of guys before you, in which case, have fun with that.