To hone or not to hone...

Honeing does make the bores true and round, along with putting the right finish on the bore for the rings to seat.
When you bore a cyl it is not 100% round due to heat and metal removal, the hone corrects this and finishes the bore

There are two typse of hones that I'm aware of and that is straight stone and flex. I can see the straight stone slightly corecting very minor imperfections, but not fixing them. The flex I would have to say doesnt do anything except contouring to the walls of the cylinder and possibly making minor imperfections bigger.

a true hone is a fixed type, look at sunnen mfg, the flex or dingle berry type are used to break the glaze only, also to get the best finish you need to use honing oil, but any light oil will work, the main purpose is to keep the heat down and carry away the cuttings

BSKZ650 wrote:

a true hone is a fixed type, look at sunnen mfg, the flex or dingle berry type are used to break the glaze only, also to get the best finish you need to use honing oil, but any light oil will work, the main purpose is to keep the heat down and carry away the cuttings

a cylinder bore will never be perfectly round unless it is finished under a load/stress the same as it will be when its bolted together;)

Post edited by: PLUMMEN, at: 2007/06/21 11:28

A friend that is a motorcycle machinist managed to hone one of my 750 four cylinder blocks back straight again without exceeding the stock bore service specs, but that was the only one out of four blocks that could be saved without boring, the others were too far out of round.

You can actually hone a block to the next oversize, if you have a good enough hone (Expen$ive), it's going to take you a while to do it though

This is what he uses, $549.00 :woohoo:



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steell wrote:

A friend that is a motorcycle machinist managed to hone one of my 750 four cylinder blocks back straight again without exceeding the stock bore service specs, but that was the only one out of four blocks that could be saved without boring, the others were too far out of round.

You can actually hone a block to the next oversize, if you have a good enough hone (Expen$ive), it's going to take you a while to do it though

This is what he uses, $549.00 :woohoo:

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That is the hone that I have for doing the cyl work, thru the years I also have several ball types, mainly used for cheap quick rebuild

Did I get the question wrong ?

I thought "all" he wanted was to get his rings to seat ?

Sure , anyone can have (or do if they own a machine shop) a full on "power hone " or bore and hone for that matter.

IF you cant catch a fingernail on the ridge .

That like I said , A "flex hone" is the best thing to use at home . ITS FOOL PROOF

I think it worth mentioning that the cross hatch patern is put in usualy at 60* to cause the rings to turn.And the bore is fairly true after being bored so the honeing at this point is to install this cross hatch.
Personaly i would not rering without honing .this would just delay the seating.just my .02$