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Hey Barry R

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  • Hey Barry R

    I remember once your ring guy at F-M told me not to dingle-ball-hone a cylinder when re-ringing an old junkyard block without boring it. He said just clean it with chemicals and throw in the new rings and they'd have a better chance of sealing. Do you remember the tech behind that info?


  • #2
    Re: Hey Barry R

    I think he is either going to PRI-Orlando or getting ready to.

    I have ascribed to this myself. You are still quite likely to have an OEM hone pattern still there. A dingle-ball can make a shallow overcut that can adversely effect the number of voids in the wall that the ring sees, and what closed areas in the bore there are can be too slick to let the ring get a bite from leaving a soft cut debris in the deeper original hone cuts. Once the shallow overcuts are gone, the original hone pattern is filled and burnished and the seal will drop.

    If the taper isn't ridiculous, and the ridge is properly cut to where they don't bite the coating off the ring installing the pistons, a good cleaning with soap and water, and my favorite, Brakleen, then oil an it will have as good a chance as anything without a real bore and hone cut. Moly rings seat really well on an old bore as long as it is really cleaned up. If it is pitted much, then a trip to the machine shop is needed. I will admit having "hand honed" a few rusted bores (with the piston still in it, no new rings, ha!) with emery cloth following the original hone pattern and cleaning it up good. Blowby is a given, but you get what you pay for, it doesn't smoke except through the valve covers, and it runs way better than it should. :

    This is from my own experience, Barry can sure tell you more because he has overseen the most exhaustive of testing for the OEMs. But it might be easier to get him on the phone.

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    • #3
      Re: Hey Barry R

      If you have to pull out the ridge reamer, there is nothing of the original hone left to consider. Unless it is a dyno engine being changed around with very few test sessions, I always hand hone before a re-ring, previously with a three-leg deglazer, and sometimes with a ball brush hone; in my experience it is a mistake not to.
      -Dulcich

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      • #4
        Re: Hey Barry R

        Agree, but to clarify, I'm not talking ridge reamer territory.

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        • #5
          Re: Hey Barry R

          Of the two, the three legger is the better option. When I say ridge, I mean any thing you can catch your fingernail on. I have seen quite a few blocks with a slight ridge that still had a good hone pattern there. If it is a big ridge you are right, bore it but if I can still find the hone marks I choose to leave it alone and focus on the condition of the top ring lands.

          A very good part of ring seal as I am sure that you guys know is the ability of the ring to set to the lands and seal as the piston changes direction. The surface area of this sealing surface is much greater than the ring to bore and has a much greater effect in a running engine. This is overlooked a lot on re-rings. Smog timing curves are very cruel to pistons and can cause the lands to be wavy from warpage. If you cut the land back square then the gap between the ring and land is too wide. If there is much taper to the bore the ring will spring pretty quickly, and the best bore finish you can do won't help that. A trick I have used is to put a little more gap in the second ring to get some crankcase pressure in to prevent as much flutter as possible in the top one. Hastings used to make rings that were in "over width" sizes, and I think you can still buy ring shims to fill the gap.

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          • #6
            Re: Hey Barry R

            Oh, BTW, I'm not arguing with you Steve, so please don't think I am. You are one meticulous dude. Mounds of respect here, because that is what gets it done. When you see a picture a sweaty dude who is going nearly cross-eyed with a degree wheel, thats dedication and my kind of work!

            I got into the re-ringing stuff from the "claim rules" that kept everything but a $1000 SBC competitive at the grass-roots level. Before I get flamed, the SBC is a great engine, I just liked to see some variety. My protest was to do a very meticulous re-ring of smogger chevy pick up block at half the claim value and set the car up to handle. If we won, heck give me a $1000 for my $500 motor ;D, icing on the cake. It would piss them off though when they found out that it really was just a 2-bolt smog head 100 lap hand grenade.

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            • #7
              Re: Hey Barry R

              Hey - - I'm baaaack....

              That would have been my partner in crime over there - Scott G.
              He worked in the test labs at Sealed Power for like 20 years, and throwing new rings at old bores was standard operating procedure.

              The logic is that the cross hatch we apply on rebuilds is kind of a prep for the rings to break in on. The finish is actually improved and optimized during the service life of the engine - high spots are worn down, sharp edges are smoothed. As long as the cylinder is not so worn that a ridge or serious wear is present, the wall is likely to be better than anything you can get with any sort of flexible hone. Those things normally just add grit and superficial scratches to the surface.

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              • #8
                Re: Hey Barry R

                Interesting. FWIW, we ball honed the 302 when I freshened it two years ago and the 351C-2V when it was freshed in January. Both engines got fresh Speed Pro moly rings. The 302 has about 1000 passes on it now and the 351C about 500. Rings seated immediately and there have been zero oil control issues with either engine.

                BTW, The 351C had 2000 passes on it when I pulled it out and the cross hatch from the original bore job was still quite evident. So I gather from the discussion that I may not have even needed to do anything to the cylinders other than wipe them clean with ATF. Same with the 302 - it looked really good after 10 years of duty, including about 1500 drag passes.

                Hmmm.

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                • #9
                  Re: Hey Barry R

                  What i've done on the past is take my blocks back to the machine shop and rehoned in their machine. Are you guys saying I shouldn't do this? Or are you saying that doing nothing is better then the dingle ball hone?
                  Cognizant Dissident

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                  • #10
                    Re: Hey Barry R

                    Originally posted by Barry_R
                    The logic is that the cross hatch we apply on rebuilds is kind of a prep for the rings to break in on. The finish is actually improved and optimized during the service life of the engine - high spots are worn down, sharp edges are smoothed. As long as the cylinder is not so worn that a ridge or serious wear is present, the wall is likely to be better than anything you can get with any sort of flexible hone. Those things normally just add grit and superficial scratches to the surface.
                    Is this similar to the reason to plateau hone? Smooth out the sharp edges etc....

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                    • #11
                      Re: Hey Barry R

                      Thanks Barry. So, do you personally skip the home-honing on a re-ring job?

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                      • #12
                        Re: Hey Barry R

                        Yep - if the bore looks good I let 'er rip. The Pro Stock teams we dealt with always said the first re-ring actually made more power than when the engine was brand new.

                        Example - for the 2006 Engine Masters Challenge I re-used the same block from the 2005 entry. I checked the bores and just cleaned them up and ran it with new rings, pistons, crank, etc. Its hard to draw real conclusions since so much was changed year over year - but the 2006 iteration definitely made more power per cube than the 2005 entry even though compression was reduced - from 11.8:1 to a rules mandated 10.5:1.

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