Dear MullinsM- My manifold I ported with a dremel tool - had a free day waiting for parts - and I used the exhaust gasket as a template. Align the gasket on the head first on each port to see where in the port "window" the head port is focused. Then take same gasket align on exhaust manifold and use a black or any dark color permanent marker and color the window on the manifold completely on the surface. Focus on removing burrs and smoothing turns or radiuses as the ehaust goes through the manifold. Remember that your engine is just an air pump (we can always dump more fuel it is the air that is hard to get!) and think a bigger pipe flows more air. Anyway, on the entrance port to the exhaust manifold leave very little of the colored window you made unground smoothing and tapering as far in as you can get to. On the outside ports (big radius) focus on the outside of the radius and on the inside or straighter ports focus on the window opening size all around. While there you can polish it up with emory cloth on tapered wood or use you fingers, I used gloves, and you can really feel if you smoothed the flow up. There is a lot of bumps and extra casting there so you can remove a lot of metal. Just don't go too thin - I always felt with my fingers how thick the manifold runners were before deciding how much to take off, of course still thinking of smoothing radii. Then you can do the turbo side and the turbo marking and using the gasket again. Leave a pencil tip thin line on the manifold turbo port all the way around so it is slightly smaller than the newly ported turbo port. Good luck. My history is that I have always been into racing autos and more recently motocross bikes for my son and I built all the racing engines including the porting (science unto itself!) and port timing. Back to diesels, my exhaust temp went down almost 200 degrees due to new exhaust, intake, and the lack of leaking exhaust manifold. The porting helped some, mostly mental, but after building professional race engines I can't leave well enough alone. Coating for thermal barriers would definetely help too. Ceramic coating would keep heat where you want it - producing power! In the manifold not heating up your engine bay. Last thing, in science, in order to prove a theory, you must have a large enough statistical group to test that no matter how many times you test the theory you get the same results. Apply that to everything you hear and you can determine whether it is right or not. We are all here to help each other and I learn stuff everyday. Good luck and write me anytime.
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