Major Porting!

Terrible manifold! Designed for a non VVC head, non VVC has smaller ports, valves, crappy port shape, rough casting and full ported spec 1800 head still only flows as much gas as a stock VVC.

Even on the stock 1.8 head it would have needed a load of work! Junk.

Decent Burr helped.
WD40 cap was just slightly smaller than the port opening. First job was to open the openings to match the head. Which was time consuming fitting and removing the manifold a million times.

Above shows how much material needed removing after the openings had been adjusted! LOADS! No chance the WD40 cap will pass down this, even with a hammer. 2nd task was to make the WD40 cap slide through, then and use it to check the port is tappered and even increasing in size from the gasket face. Above shows it going through but still shed loads of material to come out.
Finished porting, you can't see the sides of the manifold tapper in the shot now! Good tapper.

Job done, all ports match the head perfectly and tapper down equally to the gasket face and also the tapper matches the tapper in the port too! It was quite a job...Around 7hrs!
I will spiraband the ports and manifold with them bolted together to clean it up even more...Once the head is off that is, off to swap to a new spec gasket and steel dowels...I will probably polish the ports too and address the valve seat area as even on the VHPD spec engines they are poorly finished with a ridge where the seat is inserted...I read its an instant 10HP from the seat area alone the rest of the port is fine. Don't want to get into flowing it as the stock pistons fall apart over 190HP/8000rpm anyway.

I will lap the valves again with diamond paste and polish the edges a bit.

Another days work there sometime. Then the motor will be ready for 285M Piper cams and wotnot.