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New ECI cylinders, need advice

BillFear

Well Known Member
Have a set of brand new ECI cylinders coming today. The factory is telling me that the rings come all gapped and set and the piston is already installed in cylinders, so all we have to do is drop in the pins and mount them up.

My mechanic says we would still like to pull them out and check everything with the rings before mounting them. I will speak to the ECI factory today, but wanted to see if others with engine experience have some input on this.

As far as I can tell, ECI is the only cylinder mfgr who does it this way.
 
Have a set of brand new ECI cylinders coming today. The factory is telling me that the rings come all gapped and set and the piston is already installed in cylinders, so all we have to do is drop in the pins and mount them up.

My mechanic says we would still like to pull them out and check everything with the rings before mounting them. I will speak to the ECI factory today, but wanted to see if others with engine experience have some input on this.

As far as I can tell, ECI is the only cylinder mfgr who does it this way.

20-years ago, I took a new out of the box Superior cylinders and did exactly what your mechanic said. Everything came apart and was measured. 5-years ago, I took a set of ECI Titan STEEL barrel cylinders out of the box and bolted them right on to an engine.

An OLD FAA inspector once told me "Trust but verify."

IMHO, both methods are correct. IF something is wrong and you do not check, it will be a short time and you will know that it is wrong.
 
FAA 8130 tag

I bought 4 new cylinders from ECI which came pre-assembled (rings gapped and installed into the cylinders) for my IO-320. I called the ECI folks and they confirmed the rings are gapped and indexed per OEM specs. These cylinders were assembled by an FAA PMA'ed facility and had 8130 tags. As an A&P IA, I typically will use the FAA 8130 tag as a sign of some level of competency, safety and quality. I put the cylinders on as is without disassembling them and I had no issues. Compressions after 5 hrs were all 78/80 and oil consumption has been 1/2 Qt per 25 hrs. The potential risk of damaging a ring while removing and re-installing the pistons is about equal to the ring already being damaged, incorrectly indexed or inside down.
 
8130 Tags

When I send a cyl off to be overhauled by a FAA approved shop and have them
put the rings on, install in cyl, sign it off, pay a small fee, it's done. They do it
all day long. This has to be a cousin of the Wellington effect.
John
 
I bought a set of ECI cylinders less than a year ago. I took them over to Performance Engines and had the pistons changed to 10:1's. We used the same rings, everything. All the rings were spot on when we fitted them. The cylinders never burned any oil. Probably a waste of $ to take them apart.
 
I have a set of six ECI cylinders for sale. They have about 450 hours on them since 4 new and 2 rebuilt per ECI recall.
The cylinders were sent new to Lycon where they were port and polished and had 10:1 pistons installed.
The cylinders were overhauled due to delimitation of rings 60 hours ago but did not break in correctly and so will need to be honed and re ringed.

Make an offer, the Lycon work is impressive.
 
Thanks all

I did just hear from ECI and since these are new PMA cylinders (not experimental) they will come with an 8130 form which confirms that they are ready to install. Thanks for the inputs.
 
When you go to slide out the piston to install the pin, go slow..... the oil ring is just above the pin hole, and it will pop out.
 
How sure are you that your guy knows more/better than a successful, large scale aircraft cylinder enterprise? Just a factor to consider. Along with the small, but very real chance they'll go back in wrong.
 
Your call

Out of the thousands of engines of all kinds I have sent out to be reworked or replaced in part or as a unit. We would check the ring gaps and bores inspect the parts before we made the final assembly of any of it. I can not tell you how many parts we have seen or installed brand new and used that had faults.
Now having said this. I like ECI, their people and have had very good luck with their engine parts. Most of their people have been at this for a long time and know their stuff very well. I would do the same thing with my lawn mower motor. If I am going to spend the time and money to do the job, I really don't want to do it twice. It is more cost effective to spent a little bit more time and cut down your odds of a problem. But this is just my thoughts on this it is your engine. Yours, R.E.A. III #80888
 
ECI Quality Control? NOT!

My engine is now at LyCon's shop in California (last four months) after I installed 6 Brand new steel barreled ECI cylinders with forged 10 to 1 pistons that were supposedly "fitted" by ECI, with new rings "also fitted". After 34 hours I had a piston failure and melted one due to piston wall clearance being too tight. Of course, there was metal throughout the entire engine after 5 minutes of this.This has cost me several thousand dollars(not counting the 12,000 I gave ECI) and ECI says too bad. Great Warranty huh? They do not check the piston wall clearance nor do they verify anything in the assembly of their brand new cylinders. Ask for a build sheet and see what you get. Maybe you need to disassemble the whole friggen cylinder(valves and all) prior to use? NO MORE ECI PRODUCTS FOR ME ! No wonder they sold out! If you buy ECI's brand new junk, consider yourself forewarned.
 
Coolant line removed from an auto engine. Look close inside the spigot facing the camera. Somehow it made it through the manufacturing inspection process without anyone noticing that there is no connecting passage through the wall of the main line...

 
My engine is now at LyCon's shop in California (last four months) after I installed 6 Brand new steel barreled ECI cylinders with forged 10 to 1 pistons that were supposedly "fitted" by ECI, with new rings "also fitted". After 34 hours I had a piston failure and melted one due to piston wall clearance being too tight. Of course, there was metal throughout the entire engine after 5 minutes of this.This has cost me several thousand dollars(not counting the 12,000 I gave ECI) and ECI says too bad. Great Warranty huh? They do not check the piston wall clearance nor do they verify anything in the assembly of their brand new cylinders. Ask for a build sheet and see what you get. Maybe you need to disassemble the whole friggen cylinder(valves and all) prior to use? NO MORE ECI PRODUCTS FOR ME ! No wonder they sold out! If you buy ECI's brand new junk, consider yourself forewarned.

Something doesn't sound right here.. Where did these 10:1 pistons come from, who exactly installed them in the bores, who installed the complete cylinders on the engine and who told you the piston clearance was too tight from ECI? ECI cylinder kits are not available with 10:1 pistons. Someone retro fitted these pistons on the 8:75 kits.

Last spring I bought 4 brand new ECI cylinders, removed the stock pistons and installed 4 new forged 10:1 pistons with the pre fitted ECI rings, everything fit perfect. They hardly burned any oil during break in, maybe a few quarts in 50 hours.

There's got to be more to this story....
 
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There is a lot more to the story alright. The owner of LyCon is the one that measured the ECI supposedly "fitted" forged Pistons that LyCon provided to ECI when he disassembled my engine after the meltdown event. These same Pistons were measured by LyCon prior to shipment to ECI. ECI even put the wrong weight (never weighed) on the Pistons. Forged Pistons require more piston to wall clearance on aircooled engines than stock cast Pistons but you would rely on the engine cylinder manufacturer to know that. They never measured or "fitted anything" . If you think an 8130 means anything you are wrong ! Ask for a build sheet (all tolerances/clearances and work done) on your cylinder assemblies and see what you get. You'll get a pencil whipped BS form if you are lucky. I'll never trust anything that comes from them again. Their correspondence says they come with everything fitted and ready to install. I have seen A&P mechanics take them from the boxes and install them on the engine for 30 or so years. There is more to this story as all of this occurred after their (ECI) rings failed on my first set of cylinders after 300 hours. There is more.
 
There is a lot more to the story alright. The owner of LyCon is the one that measured the ECI supposedly "fitted" forged Pistons that LyCon provided to ECI when he disassembled my engine after the meltdown event. These same Pistons were measured by LyCon prior to shipment to ECI. ECI even put the wrong weight (never weighed) on the Pistons. Forged Pistons require more piston to wall clearance on aircooled engines than stock cast Pistons but you would rely on the engine cylinder manufacturer to know that. They never measured or "fitted anything" . If you think an 8130 means anything you are wrong ! Ask for a build sheet (all tolerances/clearances and work done) on your cylinder assemblies and see what you get. You'll get a pencil whipped BS form if you are lucky. I'll never trust anything that comes from them again. Their correspondence says they come with everything fitted and ready to install. I have seen A&P mechanics take them from the boxes and install them on the engine for 30 or so years. There is more to this story as all of this occurred after their (ECI) rings failed on my first set of cylinders after 300 hours. There is more.
 
So are you saying that LyCon supplied some pistons to ECi which had different requirements than stock pistons, then ECi put them in the cylinder, then LyCon received the cylinder assemblies and bolted them to the engine without verifying that their custom requirements were met?

Just trying to understand. It's hard to make out exactly what went on from your rant.
 
Kurt

ECI compression ring failure (delamination after 300 hours) led me to buy six new ECI steel barrel cylinders and have ECI fit them with with 10 to 1 Ly-Con forged pistons that were shipped to ECI to be honed "fitted" and new rings to be gapped "fitted". ECI did not provide the recommended piston to cylinder wall clearance for the forged pistons. They did not even contact or inquire Ly-Con for this. They just ordered the pistons. After installation This led to a piston overheating and melting under full power. This led to metal in my engine. I sent the engine to Ly-Con to be disassembled and measured. This is when they found that the pistons were not properly fitted to .009-.0095. This is also when they found that the weight of the piston was not what ECI wrote on the pistons. Does this make more sense? I hope so.
 
I'm not slighting your experience but I think the engine builder has to take the final responsibility for what they install. ECI has had their problems with some cylinders but so has Lycoming and Superior. With that said, LyCon has certainly had their share of failures as well. I find it very odd that LyCon didn't install their own pistons in the new ECI cylinders there at LyCon. I don't think I've ever seen an engine builder send hi performance parts to an OEM and ask them to install them, then send these assemblies back to the engine builder. LyCon overhauls and builds cylinders there at their shop. So if what you're saying is what actually happened at LyCon then they want to shift the whole blame on ECI instead of saying they didn't check the work they farmed out to another shop. That in is self is not responsible. And you're left holding the bag. Seeing as I've done the exact same thing you had done, install new forged 10:1 pistons in new stock ECI cylinders, and have no problems at all that makes me think there's more to this story LyCon has told you. I used Performance Engine pistons and the ECI rings that came with the kits. It's quite possible that there was a tight LyCon piston but there are other reasons that cause cylinder failure, too.
 
I know you have had issues with Ly-Con and Now I have issues with ECI.
It's really not odd at all for one supplier to ship parts to another for final assembly. They do it all the time. The fact that ECI advertises that their cylinder assemblies come with fitted pistons and rings all lubed up and ready to install must be a lie huh? Ly-Con did nothing but supply ECI 6 forged pistons that ECI ordered from them. I had ordered the cylinder assemblies from ECI because they were available (partial warranty after premature ECI ring failure) and they agreed to fit the pistons to the new cylinders. What you are saying is do not trust any supplier. I get that. Engine building experience? Yeah I have some. I see your performance engine post and could share some of the same negative stories with you about them but won't get in to that. I'm just warning folks to look close!
 
I'm certainly not defending anyone but LyCon was the final builder for your engine. And I don't always take everyone's word as to why something failed, especially if that someone would have to pay quite a bit if they said they might have been at fault. This goes for LyCon and ECI. I just find it odd that LyCon didn't fit and install their own pistons into cylinders they are installing on an engine. In the group of guys I fly with none has ever had a problem with a forged piston in a new cylinder, ECI, Lycoming or Superior. Most all of the planes have 10:1's.

I guess at this point there's not much you can do but fix the engine and pay the bill, looks like no one's going to step up to the plate. I just don't know if I would take LyCon's word as gospel, or anyone's for that matter.

Yes, Performance Engines did have a long running problem but it was long delays and finances. I'm sure this was mostly from using lots of time building the Reno engines and putting the regular customers on the waiting list. Made for plenty of unhappy people. But he does do xlnt work, consistently.

I think everyone's experiences with shops and suppliers should be posted for people to be aware of, and we all need to be smart buyers and question anything we aren't completely sure of. Good luck with your engine.
 
I pulled an ECi cylinder once, sent back to them for rework, and then reinstalled just like they are saying.....left the piston rings in the cylinder as I slipped the wrist pin in place. Many hundreds of hours on that cylinder and it is working fine. At the time, I did not have a set of ring compressors.....so this was my only option. I'm a very meticulous kind of person....and general follow the factory's advice whenever possible.
 
Ly-Con was not he final builder of my engine. I was/am the final builder of my engine. Ly-Con was not involved in the process other than supplying the pistons to ECI as ECI was out of forged pistons from their other supplier of forged pistons. ECI has "fitted" installed these types of pistons before. The facts are that they neglected to check the final clearance dimensions for the forged pistons. This led to a clearance that was for cast pistons which is .003 or so less than for the forged pistons. This led to a failure. I made the trip to Ly-Con's shop and verified the measurements myself. I sent the engine to their shop (outside third party) to avoid the sniping that occurs when you are the one that does the final assembly. ECI does not and will not question Ly-Con's findings. I continue to pay all of the bills. What I have said and will continue to say is you better pull them apart and check them for yourself. No such thing as "fitted" and "ready to install" ! Thanks for the kind words of support. This has been a lesson indeed for an old engine guy.
 
Humm, with all that info I think I can see what might have happened. And BTW I have no problem with people building their own engines, as long as they know how. I've done some myself as an A&P and experimental. Sounds like LyCon and ECI both have a stake in this, LyCon might have sent ECI one piston that was a hair oversized and ECI used just one piston to measure all 6 installations, instead of all 6 pistons. Then put them together. I've seen this many times with auto engine builders, it's faster. But they shouldn't have assumed all 6 pistons were perfect. We've never had to "fit" forged pistons in new cylinders but we always measure each and every part and each kit has it's own set of parts.

I'm sure you'll have better luck now with the new parts fitted right. (we hope) Blue Skys
 
Ly-Con gave me the data sheet on the 6 pistons that were shipped to ECI
All six were very close dimension wise .0005 and within a gram on weight. We weighed them again while I was there. I spent 4 days at their shop.
 
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