The motor is in the car now....no front clip on it yet but once that happens I am sure I will be looking for some solution. I have made a couple of short pulls up the drive way and she still needs a little tuning but over all I am pleased. We just wanted to make sure we had a running chassis before we remove to body for painting.
Clyde

 

Here is an example of poor ring seal on this build this engine had 400 miles on it and the oil was getting dirty in less then 100 miles it had Speed Pro pistons and rings the hone did not look bad but with a torque plate installed it showed .003 distortion and the leak down test was very high for a new build up to 40%.

The interesting point is all we did is plate hone to the next over size and line honed it, rebalance the rotator Speed Pro pistons and rings last time that Jack stopped by with his car it had 950 miles on the oil and it was still yellow colored And also said its the best that engines has run since he bought the car.

Here are the links to look over
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c1-a...blem-saga.html

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c1-a...ga-update.html

 

Thanks Blockman, great notes I enjoyed the read. Very good results with flat top pistons and a bad distributor. Heck he will be able to run on regular gas. I agree that poor shops do more to hurt the aftermarket rebuilders than any other issue. A properly rebuilt engine can be far better than it was new. I have done fax films on Cylinders from Ford crate engines because they were burning oil. Turned out these factory engines had very poor cyl finish. A local rebuilder was able to hone them and eliminate the problem.
The Sunnen 625 finish if properly installed with at least .001 taken out of the bore to remove all boring tears will give you almost instant seating of the rings, ( providing the cyl is round after torque is applied ).
Racers that want less cyl drag on start up will go smother, maybe a couple strokes with the 825 stone. ( Plateu Hone )The Osborne brush can do a great job of cleaning debree out of the cyl cross hatch and leaves the cyl even smoother. Again only a few strokes helps but many stokes start to fold over the peaks and valleys of your cross hatch.
Be careful how much smoother you go. Drag racers don't worry too much about longevity.
For the rings to work well long term they need to rotate slowly while the engine is running.
A properly applied 625 finish with the proper crosshatch gives you this slow rotation of the rings while running and enhances ring seal.
Too steep an angle on the crosshatch makes the ring spin faster and redues the seal and causes piston ring land wear. Too flat crosshatch does the opposite, no rotation and again poor seal and less life.
I agree with the use of Torque plates, 100% positive results, not a negative to be found.
Have you thought of using the torque plates on the block while line honing? Same issues.
GM small blocks are pretty good but you can find as much as .0015 distortion in a small block Ford Main Bearings once the heads are torqued.
Hope this helps.

 

Gordon and I just put in my new motor and it's runnig great, no leaks and will be bringing her home tomorrow with some spirited driving to she what she's got , can't wait......

 

Its amazing how so many guys are blind on honing blocks and what it takes to do a proffessional job and it does make a differance in the end. We use a Sunnen 616 Cylinder King to hone our blocks and for finish stones we use the 623 which is a softer stone then the 625 stones and we plateau with a 600 stone and have had great results.

Using brushes in performance engines is a no no in my book and Richard Maskins owner of Dart has done some research on them and say not to use them as well.

Here is a good link on honing Richard did at the last PRI SHOW I went to last Dec.
http://www.dartheadstv.com/featured_...php?reset=true

We build alot of circle track engines and at the track our engines need no rags wraped around the breathers like other engines I see and even after 2 or 3 years of racing they still need rags on the breathers, Which tells me if the rings have not seated and probably not going to seal because of poor cylinder prep.

We have done leak down tests after a season of racing and have found 1.5 to 2% leak down with out using zero gap rings!!

As far as line hone with torque plates I have not done that as we have had zero problems with main bearings and rod bearings and if I was seeing a problem with bearing wear ETC. I would look at a better way to line hone.

Thanks Carl

 

The better blocks are high nickol content cast iron and the softer hones work much better as you have noted. Sealed Power for years had 20 to 26 dyno's working full time for OE piston ring design and many other ways of testing in mock cylinders and they never found a performance advantage to zero gap rings. They do help keep alchohol out of a parked engine but that should be run out of the engine before parking in the first place.
Your 1.5% to 2% leak down shows first quality hone and bore work. It does not get any better.
The Sunnen 616 is a great machine.
I am glad you are still using stones, my information I share is 5 years old and may be obsolete but Sealed Power never achieved the same results using the newer Diamond stones. They were getting 20,000 miles per qt of oil consumption using traditional stones , the 625, and working hard to reach 5,000 miles per quart of oil consumption when testing Diamond stones.

5,000 miles per quart of consumption is not bad, most people would be happy with that but it leaves a lot of improvement on the table and maybe the newer Diamonds can approach the performance given by the stones.

As far as the brushes, I agree with you, Sealed power found a couple strokes with the Osborne brush did clean out a lot of debree left from the machining process but no improvement in performance. Too many strokes were a detriment and started folding over the peaks in the cross hatch.

Thanks for the exchange.