Cylinder honing

[Jaredb1]

I had a few questions regarding honing cylinders. I am working on a small block Chrysler. It was 4.030 bore, 4" stroke. I was very unhappy with how noisy it was. It had a lot of piston slap. So I tore it down. I had about .008" piston to wall clearance (the pistons called for .0045-.0055) and the bores were tapered and out of round. I thought I would straighten the bores out and have the pistons coated to get the proper clearance.
I bought a Lisle 15000 rigid hone and started working on one cylinder. I had never used a hone before so I read as much as I could on the Internet about how to do it. After a little trial and error I got the cylinder I was working on round within .0002" and taper to within .0004". At that point my bore measured 4.033. I ended up changing my mind about the piston coating and I proceeded to try and hone it to .040" over. With 180 grit stones I honed it to 4.038. I thought that would be a good place to stop until I get the new pistons. It took a month of sundays to remove that much material. But the cylinder is still round and true. So on to my questions.
With 7 cylinders left to do I am looking to speed up the process.
Will 80 grit or 150 grit stones cut a lot faster?
Will honing dry cut faster?
Do I need to worry about cross hatch pattern with every grit of stone or just my finish grit?
How much material should I leave for the finish hone?
Thanks

[Jaredb1]

I am using a torque plate. I am using my old head gasket with the torque plate, but was considering going to a cometic. I wonder how much that will change it?

[HDBD]

The rougher stone will help a little. It is going to take a long time. You will also need stones of different grits to finish with

[ClassAct]

IMHO you are wasting your time. You can never duplicate what's honing machine can do.

Take the block and get it professionally honed by someone who understands bore geometry and finish.

There is more to honing that just removing materiel.

[Jaredb1]

IMHO you are wasting your time. You can never duplicate what's honing machine can do.

Take the block and get it professionally honed by someone who understands bore geometry and finish.

There is more to honing that just removing materiel.

Thanks for your input. I have been down that road and it didn't work out. Right now this will be the 3rd build on this motor. I have about 10 grand in a run of the mill small block that used a quart of oil every 500 miles and knocked like hell. I should have bought a crate motor from day one, but I like to spend money locally when I can. At this point a have paid a lot of money for poor work through two different builders. Why pay someone to screw something up when I am more than capable of screwing stuff up myself?

[rustbucket79]

You're crazy, but do the rest with 80 grit to within .003" of your finished size, then 150 grit to within .001", then finish off with your 180 stones.

[Dave Koehler]

IMHO you are wasting your time. You can never duplicate what's honing machine can do.

Take the block and get it professionally honed by someone who understands bore geometry and finish.

There is more to honing that just removing materiel.

I suppose that those of us that had to hand hone before the machines came along will beg to differ.

[Jaredb1]

Thanks, actually I will be finishing with 280 grit stones. I am most definitely crazy. It's this engine that is making me that way. Lol. About 4 or 5 years ago my 318 gave out on me. I went to a local junkyard and picked up a 5.9 magnum with the intention of having the shop that built the engine in the race car building it. They told me they were 6mo behind. So I had a different well known rebuilder do it. They completely rebuilt it. Bore, hone, line hone ect. We went with aftermarket EQ heads. Harland Sharp rockers, comp cam , air gap intake. Nothing crazy just a good solid 360 to put in my truck.
Within 2 minutes of start up a valve seized up. I called the engine builder. We went through all of the "did you prime it, how did you do it? Was oil getting to all the rockers?" Yes, yes and yes. They asked me to remove the heads and bring them to them. They found the guides were too tight. I guess they didn't check them before putting them on. They reworked the heads.
C
Round 2. I got the reworked heads put them on. Start it up and pow. Within a minute 2 valves seized up. As you can imagine I am stumped and furious. I called the place the heads came from. They are one of the biggest Mopar oriented part suppliers. They inform me that they had a bad batch of valves or something. Their phone had been ringing off the hook over this model of head. They offered to send me new stainless valves and bronze liners for my builder to install. They offered to pay the machine work bill and sent all associated gaskets.

Round 3
I got the heads reworked again. I installed them. I fired it up and everything was good. But hold on. We are about half way through this story.

[travis]

I’ve seen people do this with good results on single cylinder engines (and it took forever), but to do 8 cylinders? That’s borderline sadistic

[Jaredb1]

Round 4
After all the issues with the cylinder heads every thing is perfect. It is everything I wanted. It ran well the power was good. I put about 5000 miles or so on it. One day I was fiddling withe carb and noticed the balancer was running in and out about 1/8. It appears the thrust bearing had failed. I pull it out and sure enough that's what it was. The crank was all chewed up on the thrust surface. By now it's my problem but I called the builder anyway. They suggested it was the torque converter that cause it to fail. I am about sick of this truck by now. I decide to take the block to my regular engine builder and start all over. They inform me they no longer assemble engines. They suggested I let them order a stroker kit for it. They would do any required machine work and balancing. Then I could do the assembly. That's the route I went. I ended up throwing the EQ heads out by the barn and had the machine shop order Edelbrock heads and port them for the 408.
I got the block back, the rotating assembly, bearings, heads, everything from my engine builder ready to assemble. I assemble, install, and break in. It's all good or so I thought. A few hundred miles it had used a quart of oil and the piston slap was really loud until completely warmed up. The piston slap I figured was normal for forged pistons. This was the first time I had used forged pistons in something that had an exhaust. I was concerned about the oil usage. Did I screw something up? Did I put rings in upside down? I am no expert but I had built a few automotive and motorcycle engines with no troubles. I have rebuilt dozens of transmission's and transfer cases with no issues. I design and build automated machinery for a living. But hey I could have made a mistake.
I toughed it out for a long while. I probably put 6-7 thousand miles on it, adding a quart of oil every 500 miles or so.
I finally pulled it out and tore it down. That's how I got where I am today. The pistons had way too much clearance. The bores had .0015 taper and .0005 out of round. I dnot think they wore that way. I think that's how they came from the machine shop. It was too loud and used oil from day one. So I am bound and determined to do this myself. I WILL get it right. When I get it back together I am going to pull it out in front of the house, stand on the gas pedal until one of three things happen.
Pop the tires, throw the crank out the bottom, or run out of gas. At that point I will push it off into the yard and put a free sign on it.

[jed]

It sounds like to me u have spent enough money to have bought machine shop equipment to
Have done the work your self. I will have to agree with Mr Koehler u can hone cylinders by hand and be very successful at it.
Pay no attention to the nay Sayers. If u have questions pm Dave or my self.
One suggestion I have is buy a boring bar so the next time you can bore the cylinders your self. You can bore cylinders
By setting the boring bar on the deck and bore, that way u don't need a fixture.
If I were doing it I would use 150/180 to with in .0025/.003 then use 220/280 with in .0005 then use 320 to size or a couple of tents big then finish with 10 strokes with 400s. Then brushes if u can afford them.
Shoddy machine work is what got me into the machine shop business

[Joe-71]

Many years ago when I was finishing up my Automotive degree, we had to hand hone all eight cylinders and finish hone them with proper crosshatch and measurement with dial bore gage, etc. Was all done with instructor measuring and verifying every tiny detail. Was it easy? No, but it was a true learning experience, just as offset boring, balancing using triple beam scales, etc. Count your strokes and measure the results several times so that you can have a good idea of how much each set of strokes removes. Best to reduce tension on your stones for the last few strokes but keep the speed constant so the crosshatch will be right. Why not get the rest of the block bored to the 4.038" and finish hone yourself. Save a lot of time and effort.

[Dave Koehler]

Jared,
Something is murky to me here.
I am assuming you are working on a 360.
You stated you had a block bored and honed to 4.030.
It was too noisy to suit you so you tore it down.
You measured that you had .008 PTW clearance. Sounds reasonable for a lot of race pistons.
You said the pistons call for .0045-.0055.
Where is that spec coming from which still sounds loose for a street engine?

Here is where it gets murky.
If it was bored to 4.030 and the pistons were made for that bore things should work out just fine.
Too noisy for a muffled car perhaps but acceptable.
Were the pistons made incorrectly or badly collapsed after being run for a while?

I get the idea you want to blame the machine shop.
Don't be too hasty in this regard
Granted your measurements of out of round and taper are not wonderful but you didn't say how many miles you put on it.

Guess I am just saying the numbers don't add up as they should.
I think your problem is more likely an incorrect piston choice for quiet street use.

Chevy wins the 500

And oh hell yeah, honing .010 7 more times is sadistic.
.002-.005 is bad enough but your arms will be amazing.

[modok]

You can rough-hone dry, and some people would say that IS better, tho those people are probably no longer with us....but not forgotten.
Once you get the stones wet, they have to be used wet or will clog.

How close you can rough-hone to size....you will hear everything from .005" to .002"......it actually will depend on how well the hone is working....how aggressive and true it's actually cutting.
If it is producing a very true bore, and cutting nice at lower pressure then you can rough as close as .002" from size with 80 grit.

the closer you are to finished size the more the cross-hatch matters.

[ClassAct]

IMHO you are wasting your time. You can never duplicate what's honing machine can do.

Take the block and get it professionally honed by someone who understands bore geometry and finish.

There is more to honing that just removing materiel.

I suppose that those of us that had to hand hone before the machines came along will beg to differ.

I've hand honed my fair share of bores and if I had to do it again I wouldn't.