Cylinder head porting refers to the process of modifying the intake and exhaust ports of an internal combustion engine to improve the quality and quantity of the air flow. Cylinder heads, as manufactured, are usually suboptimal due to design and manufacturing constraints. Porting the heads provides the finely detailed attention required to bring the engine to the highest level of efficiency. More than any other single factor, the porting process is responsible for the high power output of modern engines.
This process can be applied to a standard racing engine to optimize its power output as well as to a production engine to turn it into a racing engine, to enhance its power output for daily use or to alter its power output characteristics to suit a particular application.
Daily human experience with air gives the impression that air is light and nearly non-existent as we move slowly through it. However, an engine running at high speed experiences a totally different substance. In that context, air can be thought of as thick, sticky, elastic, gooey and heavy (see viscosity). Pumping it is a major problem for engines running at speed so head porting helps to alleviate this.
Read more about Cylinder Head Porting: Port Modifications, Areas of Importance, Wave Dynamics, The "Porting and Polishing" Myth, Two-stroke Porting, Methods, Summary
Famous quotes containing the words cylinder and/or head:
“The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate
With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes
That sparkling blaz’d, his other Parts besides
Prone on the Flood, extended long and large
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the Fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr’d on Jove,
Briarios or Typhon, whom the Den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast
Leviathan,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)