Nikasil coating scratches

my advice neil is that whatever iut takes, you must speak with dale lineaweaver. it's that last 1% of knowledge that we all seek.....

i can tell you that on my air cooled pantah the cast iron linar wanted more clearance and the ring gap to be bigger. the ring gap is 2.5 thou per inch of bore while with the nikasil it's 1.5 thou. forget the piston but i have put it up before.

interestingly, on the above figures the husaberg is a sloppy fit! water cooling methinks?

but the knowledhge is out there and a web search would/should reveal it. i thought the linar cost was a lot and then remembered what will have to go into it so......

regards

Taffy

Hi Neil,

Regarding the honing of a Nikasil plated bore, the only way you can do it is with a diamond style hone. Mine had some scratches in it also (failed big end...) and the only people qualified in Australia to replate such a cylinder is Electrosil in Melbourne (Nikasil is proprietary to Mahle – Electrosil use their own ‘product’).

Before deciding if the liner was scrap, they gave it a hone yet due to the deepness of the scoring it would have required more material off than they were comfortable with. Yet they have used a diamond hone on a Nikasil plated bores many times with success apparently.

Considering that Electrosil was going to charge AU$440 to replate vs AU$390 (US$310 at the time) for an OEM liner out of the states, I ended up going with the OEM liner. Along with conrod kit, piston kit, bearings, etc. I bought all this of both Boss and MotoXotica and found both guys fantastic to deal with.

Has the JBS big bore kit a plated bore?

I had LM electroplating do the bore on my KX125, and aside from the shop siezing the bike again as soon as they put it back together, (i think they diamond honed it and then re fitted it ???) it has been going strong ever since (3 years and 3 very rough owners since).

Neil E, its probably cheap option, or at least a break even option, but you could allways end the sleve to LM electroplating in Melbourne, and have it re plated, these guys make some pretty big claims about their coating, when i spoke to the guy before aranging for my pot to be re coated, one of the guys there told me that they ran a yam 450, with no oil to try and kill the bike, and had it running for some phenominal amount of time, then only changed the piston & rings (dare say bearings, top end, overheads and so on might be at stake in such a test though)

at the time I also considered a teflon coated piston, there was another crowd in Melb who did this for racing / drag vehicles.

Azza.