History of the ported VW head? Styles that have come and went....
Jim Ratto:
years ago I posted a similar topic on the other forum, but I bet we can get into in depth here as well.
I'm always a sucker for vintage performance methods.
What different head porting styles have come and gone over the years? In the early days, prior to any of the aftermarket VW heads, which were some of the most popular trends in cylinder head modification? Today everybody has a stiffy over the CNC Wedgeport. In the late 60's and early 70's, I know cars like the Iguana were running a "square" intake port. There has been much discussion over the Lonnie Reed "wedge port", and now we can see the old Gene and Gary Berg heads that were on Berglar, and were originally on a roundy round car (weren't these heads made in a day?). Enter the 1980's and we get the Super Flow, and the Street Eliminator and now the 044.
Why do you think trends have changed? If those A/MC and B/MC cars could go so fast for their cc, which "magic" head configurations did they use? The super fast smallish cc street cars? Let's open this one up and get some good gabbing going.
SOB/RFH:
This topic will be even better if we can trace the history of who was teaching who when it comes to porting. Fumio Fukajjo was teached by the guy who started Racing Beat (wankel motor builder) and what about Gene Berg and Dean Lowrey....did not one weld the ports and the other one used Devcon F but the configuration was rather the same........I wish guys like Jeff Denhem and Dave Kawell could shed some light on this..........Bill Clarksson and Dirty Dave Venderberke as well as Steve Timms did there own porting and must have made some impact as they was fast but not in the business of selling heads at the time......Lonnie Reed and the head shop did a major step in design with the wedge ports and I always thought that this is what killed the square port heads. Bill Mitchel is not to be forgotten in this topic. I like to hear this story as well as how the desing changed over the years.
Jim Ratto:
Quote from: SOB/DBR on October 31, 2007, 22:22:54 pm
This topic will be even better if we can trace the history of who was teaching who when it comes to porting. Fumio Fukajjo was teached by the guy who started Racing Beat (wankel motor builder) and what about Gene Berg and Dean Lowrey....did not one weld the ports and the other one used Devcon F but the configuration was rather the same........I wish guys like Jeff Denhem and Dave Kawell could shed some light on this..........Bill Clarksson and Dirty Dave Venderberke as well as Steve Timms did there own porting and must have made some impact as they was fast but not in the business of selling heads at the time......Lonnie Reed and the head shop did a major step in design with the wedge ports and I always thought that this is what killed the square port heads. Bill Mitchel is not to be forgotten in this topic. I like to hear this story as well as how the desing changed over the years.
good point, man. Who welded the first set? Who made the first "oval ports" (like Gary Berg heads in the Hot VWs article elsewhere)? Don Ruckman's "Sonic Muffin" ran Berg square port heads. What about Underdog 1? What did F.A.T. heads look like? What heads did Sarge have on his bad ass 1835? Yes, FF heads....some stories? Deano heads....of course...where did he learn his magic?
ESH:
Quote from: SOB/DBR on October 31, 2007, 22:22:54 pm
...Fumio Fukajjo was teached by the guy who started Racing Beat (wankel motor builder)...
There's a few Japanese guys in the history of this hobby that did stuff over in the States mainly between the mid 60's and mid 80's I think of which not too much is now known?
Sarge:
The Underdog ran square-port heads back in the day that were done by Ron Fleming. Then, there were the angle-port heads that Darrell Vittone and Fumio came up with...the angle was at the exhaust port and was a 45 degree bend rather then a 90 degree as in a normal head (wish I had a picture...I tried calling Vittone, but he said they only had this set up for a very short period and had no photos). The next step was welding and I'd like to think it was DV and Fumio who came up with this but I'm not too sure. When I built my sandrail in 1974, Darrell introduced me to Fumio and I ordered two new Type III bare heads through the parts dept at the dealership where I was working at the time. I gave these to Fumio and he did his magic...welded, large intake ports and 40X35.5 valves. These went on a 78.4X92 engine with an Engle 125 and made 155hp @5500 rpm on DV's dyno. I wish to this day I'd never let the car go with those heads. The best part was being charged $275.00 for the weld/port job(a fortune back then ;D). Those were the days...
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