Cheep ridged hone

[old blue 75]

Has any one used one of these?

Detail Page for 15000 Engine Cylinder Hone - Lisle Corporation

Northern Auto Parts: - Lisle Specialty Engine Tools

Pretty cheep for a ridged hone. If it works.

[maxc]

I have one. Never had any good ring seal after using it with a hand drill. It might work better with at least a 1/2hp drill press. The tolerance in the mechanism it's that great. Better off having block bored and honed by a pro.

[Jginger]

I have one of those hones and I like it

[Norris]

Looks like a sunnen AN style hone, with cheap aftermarket stones. I suspect you can do a great job with it, however it takes a 5/8 or 3/4 electric drill, and quite a bit of practice. I use to do sprint car blocks with hand equipment and you can get them straight and round, but it is a skilfull endeavor. I remeber seeing Grumpy jenkins running one of these back in the small cubic inch pro stock days....... bottom line, dont buy it, take your block to a guy with a ck or cv machine. if you do buy it, get several blocks to practice on on.

[FlowSpecialist]

It's not a Sunnen copy or even remotely like it. It's an exact copy of the Snap On (Blue Point) honing system of which I have an original. It was the first pukka micrometer adjustment honing system I bought when I started doing engines. It's fine and I've honed a lot of blocks with it but the stones, at least on the original, are 5" long rather than the normal 4" which restricts the amount of up and down stroke you can use in a short bore and means it's pretty much always honing at the top of the bore but not always at the bottom of the bore. That makes it harder to get rid of any taper and in fact tends to generate a bore a tad bigger at the top than the bottom if you're not careful. However that's an issue with most types of honing if you can't push the hone a good way through the bottom of the bore without hitting something. With long bores like in diesel engines the 5" stone isn't an issue. Many people used to cut the top inch of the stones off to turn it back into a 4" system and I did cut down a set myself just for tickling the bottom of bores that were undersize when the tops were finished.

I was also never mad keen on the felt wipers. Most hones use a very soft metal wiper (Mazak perhaps is it?) which wears down at the same rate as the stones. The felt tends to compress in a sort of vague springy way and hold the stones off the bore unless you use a lot of pressure and that then needs a really big drill to turn it. However all that said it's capable of doing a damn good professional quality job.

I always found though, as did a colleague with one, that when the stones were brand new they did a cracking job but as they started to wear and clog up you could never re-dress them and get them to work anything like as well. I even tried machining the original cutting edges back on them with a single point diamond tool on the milling machine but still never got them working as well as when they were brand new.

$130 is stupid cheap though. The original must be several times that. Worth buying.

I lucked into a second hand Delapena hone a bit later and came to use that instead nearly all the time. The 4" stones mean a bit more control of where in the bore you're honing, less tendency to hone tapered towards the top of the bore and I prefer the action of the solid metal wipers. The stones also work more consistently throughout their life. Delapena was the original and is still the best IMO. Like most things the Brits invent and the yanks try to copy they just can't get it quite right I'd manage happily enough with the Snap On if I had no choice though.

BTW, if you find a hone going 'cheep' do try and make sure it is actually a hone and not a budgie. The two are easily confused. Put out some bird seed for it and if it eats any it's a budgie.

Dave

[Ol' CW]

I have used a cheapie from Autozone on a re-ring job. I don't have any way to measure ring seal, but the engine ran really good, made good low end torque and I never hav the PCV blow out....I was able to make a decent looking cross-hatch with it although not as vertical as with a "real" hone.

This was on a high-nickel block that had no ridge in it, so I suspect not much taper at all. I had no way to measure the bore at the time. I imagine the taper of the bore and the type of ring has more to do with it than what kind of hone

That said, I'm sure not many of the guys winning at your local track are using a hand hone...well except the top-fuelers right? LOL

[Ol' CW]

Ok, I just realized we're not talking about quite the same animal

anyways..........