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#16 |
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Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Houma, La.
Posts: 11,585
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Pictures as promised. Here is the stock TT250 head before any work.
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2023 Lifan Lycan 250 Chopper 2023 Venom Evader 2022 Lifan KPX250 2020 Kawasaki Vulcan S (Sold) 2004 Honda ST 1300 2016 Black Hawk 250 (sold) Keihin PE30 carb,125 main,38 slow.Pod filter,ported & decked head 10:1 CR,Direct Ignition Coil,15/40Sprockets,NGK DPR8EIX-9,De-Cat,Dual Oil Cooler,Digital Cluster 2016 Cazador180 XL 2014 Coolster150 JerryHawk250.com My YouTube Channel |
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#17 |
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Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Houma, La.
Posts: 11,585
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Tools and prepping the head. I forgot to take a picture of the Sanding flap disk.
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2023 Lifan Lycan 250 Chopper 2023 Venom Evader 2022 Lifan KPX250 2020 Kawasaki Vulcan S (Sold) 2004 Honda ST 1300 2016 Black Hawk 250 (sold) Keihin PE30 carb,125 main,38 slow.Pod filter,ported & decked head 10:1 CR,Direct Ignition Coil,15/40Sprockets,NGK DPR8EIX-9,De-Cat,Dual Oil Cooler,Digital Cluster 2016 Cazador180 XL 2014 Coolster150 JerryHawk250.com My YouTube Channel |
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#18 |
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Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Houma, La.
Posts: 11,585
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Results of the porting and polishing. Some of the pictures came out to dark and blurred.
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2023 Lifan Lycan 250 Chopper 2023 Venom Evader 2022 Lifan KPX250 2020 Kawasaki Vulcan S (Sold) 2004 Honda ST 1300 2016 Black Hawk 250 (sold) Keihin PE30 carb,125 main,38 slow.Pod filter,ported & decked head 10:1 CR,Direct Ignition Coil,15/40Sprockets,NGK DPR8EIX-9,De-Cat,Dual Oil Cooler,Digital Cluster 2016 Cazador180 XL 2014 Coolster150 JerryHawk250.com My YouTube Channel |
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#19 |
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Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Houma, La.
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Next is decking the head. As mentioned earlier you can have it milled or do it old school with lots of elbow grease. Either way the results are the same. With the method I used I started with 80 grit sand paper and finished with 220 grit. I place a piece of 1/4" glass on a piece of plywood and stapled the sandpaper over it. On my Hawk head I did by hand. Using only the weight of the head sand in a back and forth direction rotating the head every 5th or 6th stroke until you removed the material needed.
This time I use my drill which goes much quicker but must do at a low rpm. Before you start I took a measurement using a strait edge placed across the head and the depth gauge on my caliper. I then set the depth gauge 1mm less . As in sanded the head with 80 grit I check every so often until I was close to the depth I needed them I finished it up with 220. I hope this helps other. Other methods I have used in the past were a larger bench top belt sander for outboard motor heads and bench top disc sander for single cylinder heads.
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2023 Lifan Lycan 250 Chopper 2023 Venom Evader 2022 Lifan KPX250 2020 Kawasaki Vulcan S (Sold) 2004 Honda ST 1300 2016 Black Hawk 250 (sold) Keihin PE30 carb,125 main,38 slow.Pod filter,ported & decked head 10:1 CR,Direct Ignition Coil,15/40Sprockets,NGK DPR8EIX-9,De-Cat,Dual Oil Cooler,Digital Cluster 2016 Cazador180 XL 2014 Coolster150 JerryHawk250.com My YouTube Channel Last edited by JerryHawk250; 07-16-2019 at 10:49 AM. |
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#20 |
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 8,045
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Great pictures Jerry!, This is a perfect example of what I would call a good basic port job that almost anybody can do without fear of "screwing up" the head. Call it "stage 1" if you will.
I am going to shamelessly borrow your first picture for some exposition, if you don't mind. Now, for the OP. If you want to take it even further than what Jerry has shown here, and want to chase as much flow through the ports and in/out the combustion chamber as possible, without taking the head to a machine shop for some more advanced stuff like valve seat work, you can take these next steps. To start, the Orange arrow points to the roof behind the valve guide, this is the area that Jerry has already knocked down. Follow Jerry's example of how to knock this down and smooth that ramp behind it. I can't explain it any better than his pictures show. Yellow: This area to the sides of the valve guides is a critical spot to focus on to increase flow through the ports. You want to knock down as much of that area as possible to match up with the rounded part of the bowl and roof, all while keeping transitions smooth. The trick is to not alter the relative diameter of the port. What I do is imagine the cross section of that area as a circle, and work within the confines of that circle. Then I attack it in layers, doing it in increasing stages until I get the shape I am after. Once you get roughly close to what you want, stop short and use a less aggressive method of material removal to give you more control over the final shape. Blue. This is the valve seat to bowl transition. From these pictures I can already say that the TT250 is still much better than the Hawk head or the one I bought - where the back edge of the seat actually protruded into the port a little in some places. This is an area to be careful at, don't knick the mating surface of the valve seat. Focus on the back edge of the seat and the port material right behind it. The aim is to knock both sections down until that seam is level, and this is easy to check by feel. A small sanding roll can achieve this, just go light, slow, and keep that bit/sanding drum moving. Never stop in one spot (good advice for all porting work in general). Green: These sharp ridges in the combustion chamber are known as machinist ridges. At a minimum, lightly knock those ridges down and then smooth it out until it is all nice and round. This will reduce hot spots and give a more uniform chamber temp. This will also give a smoother flow transition into the chamber helping to maintain a higher swirl velocity. Combining those aspects together makes for a much more stable and efficient combustion event. Purple: More or less the same as green, but specifically focused on the outer edge closest to the cylinder walls. This is a great area to try and open up to increase flow in an area that is often the slowest. You don't have to go crazy here, but better flow here is just another thing that adds to the sum total.
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Hawk Information and Resource guide: http://www.chinariders.net/showthread.php?t=20331 2018 Hawk 250 - Full Mod list here. http://www.chinariders.net/showpost....62&postcount=1 2024 Royal Enfield Shotgun 650 https://chinariders.net/showthread.php?t=34124 |
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#21 |
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Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Houma, La.
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Thanks Dan for putting this into words. You are much better at doing that than I am. Lol I'm more of a here, hold my beer an watch kind of guy.
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2023 Lifan Lycan 250 Chopper 2023 Venom Evader 2022 Lifan KPX250 2020 Kawasaki Vulcan S (Sold) 2004 Honda ST 1300 2016 Black Hawk 250 (sold) Keihin PE30 carb,125 main,38 slow.Pod filter,ported & decked head 10:1 CR,Direct Ignition Coil,15/40Sprockets,NGK DPR8EIX-9,De-Cat,Dual Oil Cooler,Digital Cluster 2016 Cazador180 XL 2014 Coolster150 JerryHawk250.com My YouTube Channel |
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#22 |
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 8,045
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I am going to share some links to my own pictures to kind of help with a visual on what I described.
First, this is the intake port of my head in process. Here you can see how I worked around the sides of the valve guide. I slowly knocked this down, always pulling toward the roof/valve guide so as not to alter the width of the port wall. The aim here is to reduce low pressure zones that can decrease velocity and also maintain a more uniform port shape, essentially eliminating a choke point. I spent a lot of time smoothing the short side radius and blending the roof around the guide and sides into the bowl to get a nice uniform transitions, but aside from around the guide, I focused heavily on not removing much material. The intake port is already sufficiently sized for our 230cc engines. Aim to create a smooth gradual funnel shape from the port entrance to the seat. http://chinariders.net/attachment.ph...1&d=1514533495 This is the intake port before I started any work. http://chinariders.net/attachment.ph...1&d=1511069961 This is what I started with on the exhaust port. http://chinariders.net/attachment.ph...1&d=1511069186 This is my finished exhaust port. As you can tell, I spent 90% of my efforts focused around that valve guide and the roof of the chamber. The short side radius and floor I just smoothed out with a minimal amount of material removal. One trick with the port exit that I don't have a picture of is to place a new exhaust gasket in the head to act as a guide for the port exit shape if you want to achieve something more port matched to the exhaust header, again trying to make the size increase as gradual as possible. http://chinariders.net/attachment.ph...1&d=1515233940 Here is my combustion chamber. As you can see, I knocked back those machinist ridges a decent amount and smoothed it out. You can also see the rounded edge on the perimeter of the chamber circle as well as just how open the area on the outer edges of the chamber around the valves are. As much as it looks like I have sharp ridges between the two valves, that is just the reflection off of the finished surface. Not a mirror polish by any means, but a light polishing job. http://chinariders.net/attachment.ph...1&d=1515811120 As a final note, don't forget to lap those valves when you are ready to put the head back together! No point in doing all this work if your valves piss it all away. It's also a great idea to go the extra mile to really clean every part of the head before assembly. Go as far as pipe cleaner in the valve guides. Get as much of that grit out as you can.
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#23 | |
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 8,045
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Quote:
That being said, the TT250 head also needs a lot less work around the bowl area, such as around the guide, to begin with. Especially the bowl area right under the guide itself.
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#25 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Stockport, Oh.
Posts: 1,442
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Dan and Jerry are spot on when it comes to the porting, it's all about transitions, finish and port matching. I took 4 stroke and 2 stroke performance in school and we had a flow bench and a dyno so you could accurately measure increased performance.
The only thing I dont agree with is the homemade decking and valve lapping. Take it to a reputable engine shop and have a millimeter milled off and get a 3 angle valve job. Because if you're gonna put that much time into porting the head (it's not a quick or easy process) then you might as well spend the extra money to be sure the machine work is done properly. Jmo |
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#26 | |
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 8,045
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Quote:
However, if done properly, the old sandpaper on a true flat surface (glass for example) is an effective and proven method. That being said, if you have to buy everything in order to do so, then it will probably be cheaper to have a machine shop mill it since it is a tiny 1cyl head (not to mention it's a lot less work!). If you already have everything on hand, then it costs nothing. I actually milled my head at work, but had to finish it on a machined plate with a little sanding to get a consistent finish due to the smaller sized bit I had on hand combined with the old and slightly worn out mill I had permission to use. A straight edge and feeler gauges showed it to have a perfectly level surface when I was done. ![]() The valve seats are already ground from the factory, but not to the greatest standard as you can imagine. Mine had a couple of small spots that weren't the best seal thanks to a quick application of prussian blue. A quick valve lap did the trick. A 3 angle valve job would be better of course, but not essential. Again, nobody here will disagree with you. If I were building a race engine, then I absolutely would go the many extra miles to get every bit I could out if it, like stainless valves, bronze guides, new/better seats etc. For a bunch of cheap hobbyists with cheap Chinese motorcycles, the mantra is get what you can for as little as possible.
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#28 | |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Stockport, Oh.
Posts: 1,442
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Quote:
As far as money I've got $6k in my Scrambler and it is insanely fast. But the cheap Hawk isn't getting anything other than a pipe and carb as far as performance goes. If I want a serious dirtbike I'll go Japanese like I did with my XT 500. Last edited by OneLeggedRider; 01-13-2019 at 02:17 PM. Reason: Typed TT rather than XT |
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#29 | |
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 8,045
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Quote:
Assuming you had no tools at all...A Wen rotary tool kit, some cheap double cut carbide burrs for a rotary tool, and a scotch brite buffing kit (again rotary) from Amazon = $50ish. A head gasket set from ebay is another 12 bucks on top of that. So from nothing to even a basic port job for $62. Toss in say another $40 to have the head milled, which wouldn't be too unrealistic. Investment of $100 for quite a decent improvement in power, especially on the top end, is hard to sneeze at. Combine that head work with an exhaust, which you can also go cheap with if you want, a 30mm PWK carb, intake, and pod filter from Aliexpress totalling a massive $48, and the Hawk goes from "barely adequate" power to being fairly peppy... at least as peppy as a Chinese 230cc air cooled single can be.
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Hawk Information and Resource guide: http://www.chinariders.net/showthread.php?t=20331 2018 Hawk 250 - Full Mod list here. http://www.chinariders.net/showpost....62&postcount=1 2024 Royal Enfield Shotgun 650 https://chinariders.net/showthread.php?t=34124 |
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#30 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Stockport, Oh.
Posts: 1,442
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Combine that head work with an exhaust, which you can also go cheap with if you want, a 30mm PWK carb, intake, and pod filter from Aliexpress totalling a massive $48, and the Hawk goes from "barely adequate" power to being fairly peppy... at least as peppy as a Chinese 230cc air cooled single can be.[/QUOTE]
Well since we're talking about most bang for the buck, and because you have access to machine tools, have you thought about shaving the flywheel? The reason these 450s are so quick is because they have barely enough flywheel to keep them turning over (they die easily at idle) and less weight means faster engine acceleration and more rpm is possible. My Scrambler is built for dirt drags and for the money shaving the flywheel was the biggest performance increase. |
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