Puffwagon's Territory Adventures

[Tom Tucker]

Does the coating reduce your piston to bore clearances at all? I imagine it would be negligible 

[Puffwagon]

The coating is designed to take up clearance. They recommend 2 to 5 thou which is a fair bit when talking piston to bore clearance.

 

If you did a very light coat it would be nearly nothing though.

 

The skirt coating is Cerakote microslick oven cure. All the info is on the website if you're interested.

[Tom Tucker]

Yeah that's pretty impressive. Looks like a great option for closing up clearances if you have to clean up bores beyond a light hone. I imagine it's pretty hard to apply perfectly evenly though, and measure thickness?

[Puffwagon]

It's a very commonly used thing in drag racing to get more time out of pistons and afford some protection to the piston during the season. It's easy enough to apply, you just spray it on and once you've used a spray gun a few times, you get the hang of making it come out evenly. There is an instrument to measure the thickness of it, I didn't get one cos they are $1200 or something like that. With the gun/compressor settings I use, a very light coat does nearly nothing, a single heavy coat does about 5 thou and a couple of heavy coats is around 10 thou. I have micrometers, so that is what I use to measure the piston after it's dry. Because they are self clearancing it's not vital to have them exactly the same, but they are very close to each other anyway once they're done.

[bjc]

Seems like the coatings works for you though... I've seen Steve Morris using whatever brand he has gone to now for the piston skirts (line to line?) and he's happy with it along with what he calls a hard anodising on the crown. 

The Motoroil Geek and his offsider with whatever they use and now testing coatings on their total seal piston rings. 

[Puffwagon]

Yep I will be interested to see what it looks like the next time it gets pulled down for work.

[Puffwagon]

Engine out and measured the bores. Bear in mind this block is std with 380xxxkm on it... It has between 0.5 and 1 thou out of round and taper in it. Taper is nearly non existent but obviously out of round is where it gets most of the wear. I could get it professionally honed to make it round and it would still make size. But I ain't gonna, it's well within service limits so I'm just gonna send it. 

[Puffwagon]

Rings gapped and on pistons

 

[Puffwagon]

There's most of a bottom end. Still gotta clean up the sump surface and torque the mains but the hard part is done. 

 

[Puffwagon]

Still battling the gastro but got some more done today. Head cleaned up, a couple of leaking valves lapped in, washed, rinsed, dried and ready to go back on. Block surface prepped but not a lot to do there. Wankers sent me a bent gasket but it should straighten out after a heat cycle and re-torque. Fitted the head and snugged it down to 120lbft. Hmmm, lifters and Kelford 218-C cams fitted, Atomic vernier gears fitted, timing chain done and timed up and it was about then that I had enough and am now sitting with a bundy and coke.