Part 8: Cylinder Honing

Smoothing the cylinder walls required two special tools that Fred had on hand.  A ridge reamer was used to smooth out the ridge that formed at the top of the cylinder (the bottom of the cylinder had worn down from the piston rings leaving a ~1/4" at the top where the rings did not rub) and a cylinder honer was used to smooth the out the slight vertical grooves left behind by the old rings on the cylinder walls.

Before we took the pistons out, we did a bit of ridge reaming to scrape off the cylinder wall that had not worn away, but after removing the pistons, we found that we had not done enough ridge reaming and had to do a bit more (sometimes we alternated with the cylinder honing until we got just the right smoothness in the interior of the cylinder).

The ridge reamer was a metal contraption that had edges that would scrape along the interior of the cylinder walls.  In the picture below, Chris is using a wrench to turn the ridge reamer inside the cylinder.  Another bolt on the ridge reamer was used to adjust the diameter of the scrapers to fit just perfectly in the cylinder.  

Cylinder honing involved attaching a 3-prong antenna like object to a drill.  With some squirts of oil in the cylinder, the drill did all the work to smooth out the cylinder walls.

Fred honing the cylinder wall.  If you look closely at the cylinder next to the one being worked on, you can see the ridge that had formed in the cylinder.  The ridge reamer was used to smooth this out.

In the original cylinder honing tool, the sanding pads were sanding stones.  In these replacement pads, strips of sandpaper were adhered to flat stones - not as good.

Honed and reamed cylinders...gorgeous.