Optimizing for Performance

From Taurus Car Club Maintenance and Modification Wiki

Hi, My name is Jake, and I have a blown 5.4 liter '95 T-bird with about 400 shaft HP, and a '99 24V taurus, which I decided would benefit from an in-the-car- Port &Polish job on the heads , upper and lower intakes.

In Car Port and Polish, '99 Taurus 24 V

Well, it was time to change the plugs again at 65K....We all know the upper intake, and associated devices must be disconnected, and/or removed to accomplish this. I thought, heck, it cant be so much more to take off the lower with the IMRC (Intake Manifold Runner Control) butterflies? This led me to advise the wife that She would have to give up her precious "silver bullet" for about 3 days as I was going to do major maintenence on it. A little side note here, She has strongly forbade me to mess with Her car, as she didnt like my car verrey much after the true duals and chip, plus 3.55 gears. when I dropped the 5.4 liter engine, comp cams and blower in that 95 T-Bird, she really learned to hate it. Anyhow, I was skating on thin ice, and had to show her how really dirty everything was internally, and convince her that gasket matching, and polishing these internal passageways would make them so slick that less stuff from the EGR would be deposited , so the car would run better. Showing her the black and scaling passages panicked her, and , "Ooooh! Clean that up!!! Wow! In like flynn .... not hopping it up, juuuust cleaning things up, go figure.

The first major part off was the throttle body... Ford says not to clean them, but this one was sticking, and really filthy. I rounded the inner edge of the TB where it mates up with the rubber on the inlet side. Maybe that will smooth out flow a tad? I cleaned it as best I could, and then used a dremel flap wheel with 60 grit to open the back side a bit (maybe a mm?) trimmed the gasket a bit more , then opened up the adjoining manifold a corresponding amount. Here's the cleaned up TB

I pulled the upper manifold, and scribed the gasket profile on the runner flanges...Hmmm? Some material going to be removed here for the God of Flow.....

I used a carbide burr to open up the flanges, and the 60 grit flap wheel to polish /contour a bit more.as shown below;

The next thing to work on was the lower intake with the IMRC's .... it was filthy! was scaling, which couldnt be too good for that motor!

A check on the gaskets showed the lower was pretty tight , re; specs. with juuust a little metal to Remove on the outside edge. I used a flap wheel, and rounded the edges on the inlet side The blades of the IMRC's werew pretty tough to clean .... lotsa carb cleaner, a small wood chisel used as a scraper, and a dremel 'scotch brite buff cleaned and polished things up pretty nice;

Please note that I started to relieve the injector passages a small amount as you can see in the above pic

the thought here is that the injector passages are kinda tight, so opening them will allow the spray from the sprayer plate injectors to blend better with the incoming air, and not coat the walls of the ports as much..........Now the fun begins.... The ports on the heads, are a bit sloppy, and the cutter is going to have to be used. Getting the aluminum shavings and carbon deposits down into the combustion chambers is not deemed to be a good thing. I put in 2 layers of paper towel , packed tightly to block the trash from entering...this means you will not get all the way into the bowl, but thats ok, these heads have the valve in them, and I am not a master porter, removing and reshaping the intake ports , so I am going to just match up the gaskets, and taper to the shape in the intake runner ports, then clean and polish. After doing the upper intake which is pretty hard aluminum,I wasn't ready for the soft aluminum in the heads... the cutter ate up material like it was butter ....Careful there!! This of course produced a veritable snowstorm of aluminium shavings in the Engine bay Heres the ports dirty and the gaskets showing what to cut;

Here is what it looks like after grinding/polishing'

Notice the soft, rounded relief for the injector spray? there is still a dirty couple pieces of paper towel in each hole ... use a mini vac . then remove a layer. vac again , then another layer....I asked my wife to vac out the entire engine bay, so she helped and felt good about it....

Well, a final pass with the minivac to get everything out from where the valves live, and then I put her all back together again. the wife was nervous, as I had a lotta stuff apart and had slipped a couple xtra bolts, and some plastic doodads in the parts tray. she wanted to know what they were, and I said "I dunno". A final bit of Info; Do use anti sieze compound on all the bolts going back in, It will prevent the steel galling, and ripping threads on the soft aluminum components,A stripped thread in one of your heads can ruin your whole day.Anudder thing.... the torque spec for ford's bolts going into aluminum, is 16 to 22 ft. lbs., be careful. How did it all work out? off the line no change, but in the low/mid range to top RPM, she is somewhat faster , Its hard to tell.... the wife raved about how much better it runs, and I will allow thats probablly the case, but what do I know ? I am used to 400 ft lbs off the line, a squeeling, fishtailing, slamming into 2nd T-Bird with a double serving of adrenalin , please...

Postscript; I drove her again after a couple days, and it does seem particularly more "Zippy" at part throttle, the wife feels she is getting better mileage , so it had to be worth it. Mostly what was done was cleaning gasket matching and polishing I strongly caution anyone attempting this to be a bit careful not to go too far, and not to try to reshape the bowl, or ding the valve stems. The injector reliefs should be done so as to gently enlarge them to get more atomized fuel past the valves instead of running down the sides of the intake ports. This is not as effective as an off the car port job without the valves in the way by an expert porter with a flow bench who has invested in several sets of ruined heads to garner the experience, But on a Taurus? There just aren't many around... lots think they can, but will help you loose power, so doing it yourself has a certain advantage, and satisfaction, not to mention the price is right. Good Luck!! Jake