picked up a '91 1.6 head yesterday, including complete valvetrain and camgears for about $75.
just to practice some mild headwork and some diy port and polishing

don't want to risk ruining a perfectly good 1.8 head

 

selling it when done? lol

Good luck, what sort of references are you reading to guide you, or are you winging it?

 

if it turns out half decent, I'll sell it.

I have a book that covers some headwork, but mainly just trying to clean it up and make the ports smooth. Had some experience in porting my moped block (17hp from 50cc at 14.5k rpm )

 

Looking at your location, I bet that was a sweet deal! I don't imagine that there are too many miata parts around there.

 

I practiced on my wife's 626 v6. Everything I read stressed the importance of being conservative on material removal. Once you start to get into it, you can easily most of the points taken by the books regarding flow improvement.

 

I was thinking of having it put on a flow bench, before and after, to see what I really gained. don't know if it's worth it tho...