how important to gasket match intake to head?

Hi guys, am about to install my intake....super victor going on a small block stroker.
The port on the head is larger vs the port on the intake, sooooo I'm thinking how necessary is it to match? If it was the other way around (manifold port larger than the head) I assume it would be an issue, but the way it is, maybe not so much?
Thanks for any info!

Your reducing the size of the port. On a stroker...

it is much better to have the port on the head a little bigger than the intake I say run it!!!!!

The valve is the greatest restriction, the port alignment means next to nothing but it looks good to the eye.

Its called turbulence....I make them as smooth as
possible on the match point..... use your gasket
and match it to the larger of the two them cut on
the other.. if the head is smaller.. blend the head
about 1"in.. if the bowls havent been touched that
is the biggest improvement.. my W-5s are a touch
bigger on the bottom so I will be working on the
intake tomorrow... its about .030 off on the bottom..
its due to using a different block.. the W-2s lined
up perfect..... as they say.. a engine is a pump and
the smoother the air gets in and out the better the pump is
EDIT
the tops and sides look great...maybe its only .020
but I will partially torque everything in place
tomorrow to make sure

I hate to tell you this because the Super Victor is not a CHEAP intake but they kinda stink with-out some porting work. When I received one in a trade I was very disappointed the first time I stuck it on my flowbench for some testing. At the very least gasket match it.

Mike at MRL Performance built a 470 awhile back using 440-1 iron heads non ported and a supervic intake. did not port match and the beast still made 730+hp

my concern if I gasket match it, the matching will have to go very deep into the manifold, the head port seems that much bigger (max ported eddies), if I just gasket match it, it will look like a "cave" in the manifold and might be worse than just leaving it alone?
I think it would end up being a job I would have to farm out (porting the entire intake). If the matching only gives me 5 horsepower or so, I'm not gonna do it - not looking for the last available ounce of horsepower for this application - the only reason I have this manifold is it already has the efi injector capability (car will be efi).....
Thanks for the info so far!!

you can always take it off and have ported later if it don't work out. may help with reversion as well if it has any.

Standard answer is "it depends".

Daily driver who cares. Trying to set the record in Super Stock? might want to make those ports line up.

I would think that the sharp dropoff (as is right now) would be far worse than the "cave" you spoke of that would be developed with matching em & on that I would go in far enough for as smooth tapered transition as possible. It'd cost an arm and a leg to farm it out but if you could do it your self I definitely would. EDIT if a person ain't never ported before I would highly suggest spending a few hours on a junk head just to get a basic feel for how it feels

I've ported intakes for guys that race in classes that you are only allowed to (blend) into the port 1 inch and thrust me that takes some time. It sounds like you are not limited like this so trust me its worth doing. That intake stinks if untouched and the good old Victor beats it hands-down. One other thing to check out on the Super Victor. It sits MUCH higher and you may have to run valve cover spacers with some valve covers. Even with some grinding I had to so if the engine is out of the car check this out before installing.

http://www.medicemfg.com/products_get.php?c=Valve%20Cover%20Spacers%20-%20Mopar

i took another look at the intake now....with the combination of core shift in the manifold and the huge ports on the head, there may hardly be enough material to match the ports! roof and floor looks doable, but the sides will be close!
by this time the entire manifold may as well get ported....i've never done this, nor do i have the tools - and i will agree, i can easily see sinking 10 hours into this - doesn't look like a quick and dirty task i can do in a night after work.....
i guess my real question is, for a 500 hp pump gas street car, how much would i be giving up?

I always port match my intakes, yes it takes some time but IMO it's time well spent.

I always gasket match/blend the manifolds to the heads and see no reason not to unless they look good as is and that's not very often.......

Some intakes will give up 30-40 CFM when bolted on a set of heads. Just for an example I ported a set of Chevy Dart Platinum 215 heads for a good Friend. He didn't want to go with a bigger valve at the time so we ended up around 305 max flow so we bolted on his stock Victor Jr and with the intake installed the heads were now flowing 260 CFM. He told me to go ahead and port the Victor Jr but that he was still going to buy the 400.00 Dart intake. After I finished porting the Victor Jr we were only down 3-5 CFM with the intake on. Guess what, the Dart intake was down almost 35 CFM too so I ended up porting it later that year for him. Using the industry standard 35 CFM is approximately the equivalent of 70 horsepower.

And what would it have made if it was ported.. I never
seen them loose power when match ported.. if your concern
is version then the cam and headers are wrong

Knowone knows, but he was very happy and surprized it made that much.

i think whats more important and would give better results would be to port the intake as the intake needs to flow 20-30% more than your head intake port to prevent a bottle neck. IMO i dont think port matching 1" into the intake is worth much as you still would have a smaller port in your intake.

On a particular intake for a GM. I do a $100 intake port job for alot of guys. Its a gasket match and i only work on 4 runners in the plenum. Its worth at a minimum of 15hp on stock short block engines. Every time. Its a nice after my real job extra money to spend on my toys

I did this on my 71 Scamp and gained a .10 on my time slips.

after sleeping on this, maybe the question needs to be rephrased...
i think we can all agree any port alignment mismatch would obviously need to be corrected. in my case, the ports match up fine, just that the head port is larger than runners, which means that just matching them, at the point of gasket may be useless?? I assume in this case the entire runners all the way to the plenum would need to be matched - do people do that?? is that what porting the intake means?

on my 408 the J-Heads were hogged out pretty large on both the intake and exhaust side....my tunnel ram ports were considerably smaller....asked my engine builder if I should match them and his response was to leave them as is....he liked the idea of the smaller opening keeping the velocity higher on this particular build....so I did and it ended up making 475HP which was 25HP more than I was shooting for....Very Happy.

I did match the carb to intake......

Rickster

from what i'v seen its usually the roof of the intake port that's worked on. I had Ryan J port a indy intake for me yrs ago. most of the work was under the carb pad on the turns, but the roof of those ports were worked on as well which would make the ports larger. that indy 360 intake flowed 350cfm on avg.

Don't mean to hijack, but seems relevant so....on this topic, I have an unported w2 pro dominator (thanks Moar Dave)
I would like to use this intake with my 360-1 245 cnc heads.
I am currently running a port matched Indy 360-3 intake and a Davinci dominator.
Do you guys think I would see any gains by switching to the unported unmatched pro dominator? Assuming it was set up properly of course.

Combo is;

468 ci
12.54-1
Bullet solid roller
360-1 245 rp cnc
727
8" ultimate convertor (5400 stall)
3:91 gear
3000 lb a-body.
Pump gas street strip car.

I doubt it.. if I recall the indy has a larger plenum
which you need for those cubes... you might want to add
a 2" spacer under the carb and see if it picks up for you

You're in the right track. Some people "bellmouth" the intake so it matches the head. That is probably close to useless. Hughes Engines offers what they call a deep port match where they go a couple of inches back into the intake and match to the gasket. It costs a few hundred dollars for that type of work. Wilson Manifolds will take it a few steps past that with full runner porting as well as plenum porting. A full competition port job from Wilson on an intake manifold is usually more than $1000.

I do the full intake runner and plenum if needed..
but I do my own stuff so its just time... but when I
was working I would take my stuff into the head lab
and have them checked and get an ideas that the guys
could offer... and that came to the intakes also..
even on a few times I had the head and intake flowed
as a package... the port match makes a difference..
as you said some of the companies will only go a inch
or so into the runner or port(on the cheapo jobs)
EDIT
I try to keep the same taper if its decent(there is a
formula for the taper but I forget what it is right now)
and if that taper is correct I try to keep it and just
clean the runners) but if its off I try to get it correct