I am going to start with a set of used housings I have a drill press and lots of mechanical ability....lol , this is not my daily driver so no rush just looking for some tips on doing this such as port size and bits to use etc.....if you have negative comments keep them to yourself not all of us have deep pockets......I will post pics during the process

i think a mill would be a better choice, unless you're really good with the drill saw.

Mazda used ~46mm ports on the 13B and ~44mm on the 12A, for the full peripheral engines

My advice, load up on some damaged used housings to practice with. I used a hole saw on mine with a hand drill on my 20b. ;).

Why not pay someone a couple hundred dollars and have them professionally done, cheaper than fucking up housings

i made a template and used a hole saw bit with a regular drill as well. honestly, it did a good job, but not a great one. i think if i make a better template, then i can do a MUCH better job for the next one. i would imagine a drill press setup would be even better though.

i just flipped through some of my notes and it looks like i went with a 32 mm hole.

as far as this sentiment is concerned, i will offer the following:
(1) why waste time and energy over something you have no control of? (above comment is my case in point)
(2) "negative comments" are indeed sometimes just negative comments. however, sometimes they are just a thin-skinned person's perception of constructive criticism. know the difference.

deep pockets have little or nothing to do with real knowledge and ingenuity.

True but, if you have means to experiment then do so. Otherwise you will never learn anything.

When I did mine, I carefully ground a hole saw until it was a uniform OD at the teeth, made a sturdy jig for the drill press (located the housings off of the dowels for repeatability), drilled pilot holes, used a dowel rod in the hole saw, used a lot of cutting fluid and worked carefully... and the holes still walked a bit.

My only advice is to make sure the tubes DO go all the way through and are at least a light press fit, otherwise the rotor housings can and will collapse at the intake port. It wasn't enough to cause problems but it still worried me a lot.

(And then I eventually said screw it and started building bridge port engines, it's less time-consuming)

exactly what happened to me. ironically, my biggest miscalculation (to use 2 different sizes for inner and outer holes) was the ONLY thing that kept me from completely messing up. the inner holes (my notes show 22 mm) both stayed true. at the end of it, they were 2º off - nothing my Dremel couldn't fix. what ended up derailing my project (aside from life circumstances) was the runners. with them being off because the outer holes were not identical, i ended up having to try opening up at the port face and that put the nails in the coffin. oh well ... lesson learned. the tubes MUST go all the way through!

i promised myself that i am going to use those housings to fire an engine someday ... and i have no doubt it will. however, i'm back to square one as far as building a good semi-peripheral. i just need to get a few pairs of housings first.

Part of me wants to do another one, more properly this time with big runners and 52mm throttle bodies. The rest of me says screw that, keep building bridge ports.

The problem is I have like four or five sets of FC rotor housings in usable to excellent condition, but not enough good side housings unless I wanted to build a 6-port. Blah on that. I think I'll try hand lapping some of the trashed T2 parts I still have, see if I can bring them back to life and just use thinner O-ring material to make up for the loss of coolant seal depth.

Lots of good info thank you all. I just tagged the car and am in the processof dismantling the spare engine over the next few weeks. Does anyone have an extra set of useable housings ? Do you have any pics of the bridge porting ?

Agree with you 100% on experimenting! but I wouldn't ruin a good set of housings to save $3 or $400.00 dollars if this is your first time doing it.

I just bought 2 new rotor housings and at 640.00 a piece I rather pay to get them done by a Pro.

Okay, where did you get new rotor housings that cheap? :)

comp price on GSL-SE housings are about $400 each... S4 FC are about $100 more and the FD housings are about $200 more ($700)

Penske employee hook up.

Nice price on the new housings , is there a place in or around the Tampa Florida area that will make a set of peripheral housings? I am curious on how much that would cost.

can't say for sure about the Tampa area, but there should be a few trustworthy places in the Orlando area and also Southern Florida. i know Carlos Lopez is down there and for sure he can do the job. you may want to check the Regional forum to know about Tampa for sure though.

price? that will probably vary from place to place. i would say figure on something between $600 and $1000 - give or take. last time i checked Defined Autoworks' (not Florida, but if i were to pay someone, he would be my first call.) they want $800 if i recall.

CLR is doing mine Semi P Port.

If your paying 600-1000, than your paying way to much.

well, at the moment i still plan to build my own, so i'm paying whatever it will cost me in housings and aluminum pipe. :) as i alluded to, my backup plan (if i prove to be an utter and hopeless FAILURE) was Defined.

out of sheer curiosity:
1. how much is he charging you?
2. did you know him or have any relationship (i'm sure you know i don't mean it like that) with him before this?

actually, i thought about it (and i don't have the power to edit in THIS forum) and i'm thinking that may have been inappropriate of me, so if you would rather PM me answers to what i asked in my above post, then that's fine, too.

Pm sent

Well, it seems that the info had on pricing needs to be amended. So disregard the figured I referenced above. Apparently, you can get them done for significantly LESS than the $600 (low end) I had been led to believe.

Carry on :) ....

i guess if you have a jig for it, it should be a really quick process. really setting up the machine from scratch is probably the hard part.

Not necessarily. Shops that have high demand can and will charge more in order to balance out the work load coming in vs. being able to get work done in time. If your shop is in high enough demand that you can charge triple the going rate and still have too much work to do, then that just means the buying public feels your work is that valuable.

The question you then have to ask yourself is, why is this shop so much more in demand, and maybe it really is worth it...

Re-read my 1st post. That's why I suggested loading up on used damaged housings. ;) My technique worked just fine because I had many junk housings to practice with.

:egrin:

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Still need to be finished up and water passages filled in.i need to get some turbo exhaust sleeves put in so I can finish the exhaust port.