<VV> Plateau honing

[Tony Underwood]

At 10:38 hours 03/29/2005, BobHelt at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 3/29/05 11:02:40 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
>hmlinc at sbcglobal.net writes:
>
> > Hi Bob,  Can you splain it a bit?  And does it apply to Vair engines?
> >
>
>Plateau Honing
>
>  The first was a rough hone to establish the wall dimensions and oil
>retention grooving. The second honing operation was with very fine stones (or
>brushes) to remove just the smallest amount of material, but to smooth the 
>cylinder
>walls. Just as the rings would do during breakin. This is called plateau
>honing since a microscopic cross-section view of the cyl wall would show 
>jagged
>valleys but with the top peaks all smoothed off like a plateau. Sort of like
>taking a mountain range and cutting off all the peaks to some level. All 
>the new
>cars use this plateau honing technique and a few engine rebuilders do too.




The same thing can be had for the cheapskate jacklegs among us by "glaze 
busting" carefully selected cylinders with 280 stones and then chasing them 
with a strip of 600 grit Wet-or-Dry sandpaper soaked in WD-40 wrapped 
around the glaze breaker.    The combo leaves a visible cross-hatch but 
smooths the peaks off, leaving almost a polish, rings seat quickly, no 
problems.

Of course, fitted machine honed cylinders are always desirable but you can 
roll yer own if you have engine building experience.   I have some used 
cylinders packed with grease on shelves which still show their factory 
cross-hatch pattern.


tony..