Excellent!

Are you ging to get the skirts coated? My experiance with the coatings has been very good. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Kevin

That may be a good idea since the skirts are so short and there's no internal X-bracing.

I've thought about it, but I haven't made a decision yet - I don't really know enough about who and what to use..... any recommendations?

Frank

Kevin -

I just re-familiarized myself with some of the materials and prices for skirt and crown coatings. It's easy to get carried away and go whole hog into crowns, skirts, combustion chambers, valves, manifolds, etc, but I don't think I can justify the cost for the benefit.

The temptation for me is to not stop with skirts and go "in for a penny, in for a pound" and I'm not sure if a less than complete coating treatment is worthwhile.

Frank

http://www.performancecoatings.com/

I have used performance coatings with good results. IMHO the skirt coatings work... I'm not convinced the thermal barrier and heat shedding coatings do anything. The informal tests I ran seemed to back that up.

Kevin


.

Frank,

I'm sure someone has probably mentioned it to you already but I figure I may as well... the forum rules specifically state that you may not post any pornographic images. This whole thread is far beyond any porn out there I'm sure!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

Very nice Frank... VERY NICE! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

I would think as long as he does not post pictures of taking the skirts off the pistons or trimming them any shorter he may be within the guidelines. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

I think there's way too many studs in the pictures. One of my friends always screamed "Virgin no more" when he stuffed the first piston in the new block, but he was tilted towards weird...

The stuff's now at the shop for block boring, rod shot-peening/checking, ARP rod bolt install, re-boring rod big ends, crank polishing and balancing the rotating assembly.

We talked about piston coatings for a bit - every engine they've seen that originally had skirt coatings did not have any left in wear areas on tear-down. I didn't ask what the shortest mileage was that they've seen. I think I might try anti-friction coatings some other time. The coatings are probably very good in the short term - and may extend the life of the engine. Friction reduction is certainly a good thing, but until I know this engine combination is good, I don't see much reason to spend more than necessary and have further delays. This preliminary machine work will probably take 2 weeks as it is.

Frank

Swapped the Diamante cams into the Montero heads - while the cams were out, was a good time to clean up the intake ports for a better gasket match, so the valves were also removed and the port work done - not race porting, just gasket matching and casting marks cleanup. Both sides were about the same - not bad, but could be better. Here you can see the extra material at mostly the top right quadrant of each port that needs to be removed on one head:

Initial rough-in with a die grinder:

After hand sanding, cleaning and reassembly with the Diamante cams:


I don't know how much it helps - or if at all...... but it's a good way to turn an hour's worth of work into an all day job! Now they can go to the machine shop for resurfacing and valve redressing.... the #6 exhaust valve leaks a little - that's where the detonation happened and where I found a loose head bolt.

Frank