They are SI Bronze guides. For your other questions I am sorry I can't speak intelligently about that. Hopefully a few with lots of experience with these engines can answer. Maybe Savington or Bogus will chime in here???

I chose these guides because I wanted to install new guides since we were removing the old ones for porting and the SI were a very popular choice.

I just finished porting my 95 1.8 non turbo...used the same pictures as a template that you probably did. very similar results when finished. i used clay and non stick cooking spray to keep track of my work, cramming it into the port and carefully removing it so that i could measure progress. i think i had to convince myself that it did increase power from 45-65k so that i didn't feel like i wasted a few hundred bucks experimenting. i was fairly warned before i started but am a tinkerer by nature.

lesson learned here..a turbo wouldn't care much about casting flaws or bowl shape, in applications under 250 h.p. IMO.... ordering turbo ingredients now.

I should be outside of that range ;) so I guess maybe it is a good thing I did mine. Everything I have read would suggest you would have been better off just buying a BP4W head since they will flow better stock than a ported 95 head.....

Absolutely correct however, after all the small parts gathering, the $1000 price seemed absurd. In retrospect maybe it was not..

I would have sold you a 99 head for 400 with intake mani........1000 is too much.

Someone always has "the deal" after the fact. Hahahaha. The way it works.

Even then, some reconditioning and all the stuff to go back together and I was back at $1000. Maybe 900.

No big deal. I tinker.

I'm gonna get on a dyno a.s.ap. for some real numbers. You know , so I can creep back up to the 1000 I didn't want to spend in the first place. Hahaha