Cylinder Honing

Need help with a recommendation for a cylinder shop that can re-hone and set and install the piston rings for a ECI nickel cylinders. Apparently, despite my care breaking procedures, the rings did not seat very well.

Thanks Steve

Steve, G&N aviation isn't too far away from you, a nice drive down the lake to Griffith Indiana. I had an engine overhauled there years ago, and they did a good job. I believe they still have a good reputation.

ECI Nickel Cyl

Hi Steve,

Sorry to hear your having to re-do your run-in. Interested to know what parameters are driving you to require a re-hone of the ECI's? I have same type cylinders with over 140 hrs now. Compressions are still 78/80 though using oil at one qrt / 8 hours. I have a friend who has a similar engine and he is barely using any oil (possibly 1 qrt per 20hrs)

Cheers, Greg

Its most interesting that people say they 'take care' running in a motor. In my experience, that generally means they 'baby' the motor and don't push it very hard. The best way to treat a new motor is to push it really hard, WOT from brand new. This will seat the rings the best, forget about the 'old school' treat the motor gently when new.

Thank you for the replies. My compressions are also 78/80 and I am also using oil at one quart per eight hours. This is more than I care for and in addition I am running higher oil temps and my oil turns dark in a very short amount of time. I did remove the number four cylinder as the bottom spark plug has always been very oily. Upon removing the piston, the top piston ring was stuck fully seated in the grove on one side of the piston.

My ECI engine was subject to the AD for the cylinders and ECI sent out replacement cylinder. I only ran the engine a short time on the ground to verify there were no leaks and adjust the timing for the Lightspeed ignition being carful not to get the cylinders to hot. I have a GRT EFIS system installed.

For break in I used a tow bar hooked up to my truck and towed the plane to the end of the run way and followed ECI's instructions on breaking in the engine and cylinders being carful to keep the percentage of power at or above 75%. My only concern was I did this during the winter time and the CHTs were in the 280 to 315 degree arrange.

Thanks Steve

Steve - I rarely if ever saw better than a quart in 8 when I had the Cerminil cylinders on my RV-8. Stuck that out for 1400 hours before I had a compression loss due to ring delamination. We had recently broken in another engine that has stock, Nitrided Lycoming cylinders - it burned a quart in about 30 hours (and has maintained that low consumption) - so I did some research with other Cerminil owners, and found that the majority burned more oil than their owner's liked. I took that as an opportunity to change that engine to stock nitrided cylinders, and have sold my stock in the oil company - we don't use hardly anything between changes now.