CSAcivic

I Have Been Trying TO Get In touch With Tbone To Get My Pistons Coated But No Luck any other companys as good as his?

blinx9900

swanetech... not sure if thats the correct spelling...

vietjdmboi

swaintech*

tony1

We do piston coating here. Calico is also a good option.

B18Flip

tbone's having computer problems, and is pretty busy working a lot ...... https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1828476 . A phone call would be the best way to contact him, I'll PM you his info . Great guy, he coated my pistons and built my engine.

boostedcivicsir

calico coated tops and skirts.

Tbone

Call me 860-978-1318 Tom
I offer several different options for the piston coatings. I have a new multistage dome coating that I'm now offering to the general public instead of just pro teams as well as several finishes.

I used to do them for Tony1 once in awhaile but i guess he got into the game now too

tony1

Tom, your coatings are awesome, no doubt! We just got to point where we were doing a lot and there's a place down the street from me that also does great work. Only reason i haven't had you do anything for me lately is because of the convenience factor of having someone local. I would have recommended you but the OP said he was having a hard time getting ahold of you. I know you've been through a lot of hard times and wasn't sure of your situation right now.

Tbone

I'm just bustin ***** Tony, I I know I'm not the only one that's doing it..
As i posted though, I'm now doing some multistage stuff for everyone which is the ultimate thermal barrier for dome's.. (hit me up for your personal race stuff)
I'm also doing alot more bearings now too. Pass the word on and my # lol

B18Flip

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tbone &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'm just bustin ***** Tony, I I know I'm not the only one that's doing it..
As i posted though, I'm now doing some multistage stuff for everyone which is the ultimate thermal barrier for dome's.. (hit me up for your personal race stuff)
I'm also doing alot more bearings now too. Pass the word on and my # lol</TD></TR></TABLE>

oh good, you found the post lol. didnt know if it was ok to post your phone # w/o asking

TheWickedOne

Bones Coatings

mini-cRx

tom is the man he did a set for me nice

HiProfile

I know this sounds unusual, but has anyone here ever tried coating their head's combustion chaimbers? I can see valves/seats getting too hot, but the head should stay cooler than the pistons.

I've just always wondered about the reflected heat being worse for detonation. If the chaimber isn't great, you could be focusing heat on that one bad spot...

ninesecrx

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by HiProfile &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I know this sounds unusual, but has anyone here ever tried coating their head's combustion chaimbers? I can see valves/seats getting too hot, but the head should stay cooler than the pistons.

I've just always wondered about the reflected heat being worse for detonation. If the chaimber isn't great, you could be focusing heat on that one bad spot...</TD></TR></TABLE>

What you are saying is very true. I try and talk people out of coatings for this reason. A piston works as a heat sink. When the heat can not be absorbed into the piston, it has to go somewhere. This usually raises egt's and possibly can wreck the cycl. head. I have seen coatings keep heat in the chamber and actually lose hp on engines because of this. With proper tune up and a quality piston, there should be no use for coatings which some call a band-aid. I realize people will argue otherwise and talk about how coatings have saved their pistons and I am fine with that.

HybridKOOP

Mike, you bring up a very interesting point.

I think a good place to look would be F1 engines, and "supercar" factory engines. Does anyone know if any F1 motors or high-end supercar manufacturers coat their pistons or leave them bare?

They put the millions of dollars into R&D, I think it'd be wise to use what they've learned.

- Louis

tony413

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by HybridKOOP &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Mike, you bring up a very interesting point.

I think a good place to look would be F1 engines, and "supercar" factory engines. Does anyone know if any F1 motors or high-end supercar manufacturers coat their pistons or leave them bare?

They put the millions of dollars into R&D, I think it'd be wise to use what they've learned.

- Louis </TD></TR></TABLE>

they leave the pistons bare. if you would like more info or a number PM me.

tony413

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by rota92 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Ferrari had plans to melt chocolate into their engines as a coating, Mclaren picked up on it and lost all their points for 08 this season, and a few motors </TD></TR></TABLE>

lmfao i guess kimi wins again

tony413

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by rota92 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">As long as the boys in red take it I'm happy

What about in the turbo era? When they were using ovalized bores? Any coating then?

I know its 20 year old thinking, but maybe that changed stuff. And what abot the CART cars? Or whatever they are called this year lol</TD></TR></TABLE>

in the turbo days of F1 im not sure what they did i mean 1.6L twin turbo 1000+hp engines arent the norm. as for the CART guys im not to sure you would need to look in a rule book i've seen the engines put together but did see any type of coatings. anyways the ROLEX 24hr is comming up in my part of town if i go ill ask some of the engineers there, if they are able to share that info.

Tbone

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ninesecrx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

What you are saying is very true. I try and talk people out of coatings for this reason. A piston works as a heat sink. When the heat can not be absorbed into the piston, it has to go somewhere. This usually raises egt's and possibly can wreck the cycl. head. I have seen coatings keep heat in the chamber and actually lose hp on engines because of this. With proper tune up and a quality piston, there should be no use for coatings which some call a band-aid. I realize people will argue otherwise and talk about how coatings have saved their pistons and I am fine with that.</TD></TR></TABLE>


A band aid???
so your saying that higher EGT's are bad????
The hotter the egt is the faster it will evacuate the cylinder. hotter air moves faster then colder air. By accelerating the exhaust pulse your now letting it help suck in the intake charge, the more air and fuel you can get in there the more power you make. boosted or NA
#2 Coating you pistons will not melt your cyl head, poor tuning and improper building will.
Piston coating's are just that , a coating. NOT pure metal, so in the case of melt down like you say dont you think the coating is going to melt before the pure aluminum cyl head? YES.
If your at the point of melting the cyl head it's because you didn't tune the car properly not because your piston is coated and deflecting the heat at the head.
Under any melting condition( heavy detonation) the coating will be the first thing to melt, which by this point your in trouble that nothing will help.
Remember , you combustion chamber is surrounded by coolant which is cooling the head, air is constantly flowing through the intake ports which is cooling the head and the egt is higher so it's leaving the head quicker.
Your statement about the piston being a heat sink is correct , but that's not a good thing as you imply, think at the much bigger picture, if you piston act's as a heat sink then where does the heat go? Down the rod to your rod bearing!!! Then where , to your OIL. So now let's look at that , oil temps and oil break down can cause engine failure.


I'll end with this, i'd rather coat my pistons and get lower oil temps which means less stress on the bearing's, lower coolant temps which is less stress on the whole motor, less thermal expansion of the piston which these honda's are notorious for when put together with the tiny piston to wall spec's given by piston manufacturers, then worry about the heat thats deflected at the head which is being cooled by 3 sources.

Most motors don't have any form of oil cooling and coatings will only help that problem by lowering the temps everywhere.
I have coated over 100 sets of pistons from 100hp motors all the way up to 1100 hp motors and have not heard of 1 ever melting a cyl head, and if they ever do i'll bet the coating will be the first thing to go , not the head.

Now that i spent all this time on the dome coating, i can go into the benifit of piston skirt and bearing coating if you would like.

ninesecrx

Sure, I would love to hear your benefits of coatings on skirt's and bearings. You have your idea's for coating pistons, and I have mine. I am always open to hear people's ideas on things

The point I was making on the piston being the heat sink and detonation is I would rather have more energy go into the piston and pull it away from the head in a failure. A piston coating will stop this from happening if it does it's job like you say and keep the heat in the chamber and WILL go to the head. This is just what will happen if we play by your rules. Always cheaper to replace pistons then a built cycl. head. Higher EGT's can damage parts esp. on street cars such as piston crowns, exhaust valves and their seats, the exhaust side of the turbo and even the wastegate.

tony413

im in on this discussion.

honestly if any engine is properly tuned piston coatings will not be needed as a form of heat protection, but rather using the coatings as a lube to shed oil or move easier against the cyclinder wall. also in a well tuned engine the piston domes should look like their natural finish when used then replaced.

Tbone

I think your thought's on egt's is exaggerated in mind to real world conditions. The piston itself will still see heat even when coated, it still expands and contracts and absorbs heat , just not nearly as much as an uncoated piston. It also helps evenly distribute the fuel across the whole crown of the piston and keeps hot spots from forming along the edges. As i pointed out before, if your motor is running at the point of damaging it's own components from heat then there's other problems.( prime example is improper amount of clearance and tuning) I have seen no damaging affects from coating on the pistons in the 8 years I have been coating them, Especially on street cars. Never had a head melt before anything else, never lost a seat or anything.
(Now you say that you have , but that's where we have a stalemate I guess)

Nor would( I think) these(my coatings) be used in military applications if they were to cause damage to the motors other components.(we do some of the newer technology pistons for certain military motors) That is however just my opinion of course.

To go further into the fuel distribution aspect I'll point out a dangerous trend i have seen on the net and in person when coating some of the guy's here's pistons.
There is a company that offers an alternative to coating the dome and they claim it's actually a better alternative .
What they are doing is taking the the piston and actually mirror polishing the domes claiming better flame travel, more hp and so on. Now let look at this for what it is, yes your closing the pores and blending everything so that there's no stress risers across the dome(think beam polishing rods and so on) but now what you have done is actually killed the proper quench. Now all the fuel that we want to atomize as much as possible coming in , is getting puddled back up and rolling off the edges of the dome and piston itself to the top ring . Your piston is slamming upward crushing the air and the fuel as much as possible to get to an ideal burn across the whole dome of the piston when the spark plug fires. Now you polish the dome so that as soon as this happens it's running for your ring pack?
Ever notice that a seasoned piston with a little carbon buildup seems to run great and even make a little more power then a fresh set does, and as a motor breaks in a little it seems to go up in power. It's not all because the carbon buildup is actually taking up volume and increasing your compression . It has to do with what's happening to the fuel as it's compressed

Now here's where the coating helps, it takes your normally smooth piston and give it some even texture, by having this texture it act's like a tiny distribution system that's evenly gathering the fuel and holding it to the dome so it can be fired evenly when the plug ignites it .

I will agree with you Mike when you say that in certain apps the coatings wont allow the full power potential as with other treatment's that don't involve coating but I can't go into that publicly as that treatment is a somewhat trade secret given to me. but it involves the theory that i just spoke of.

1 thing I'll point out quickly for everyone is that the skirt coating is not put on to be used as a sole lubricant, indeed my moly base coatings are in fact a dry film lubricant but it's purpose is to retain oil to the skirt, it doesn't just wear off like many think and post on here, when the skirt is prepped properly with sandblasting it opens up the pores of the aluminum, then when the coating is applied it cant just be air dried and put in the box like many so other coating shops and piston manufacturers do. The coatings have binders, these binders are released and bond into the pores of the aluminum during an oven cure. They have to be brought up to a certain temperature and held there for a certain amount of time to bond with the base substrate(piston). Once this happens the coating now becomes part of the surface layer of the piston. Now as long as your not removing that layer of aluminum the coating will always be there. EVEN if visually it appears to rub off. It's job is to retain oil and hold it there under high pressure loads. Each coating is rated by pressure load and wear cycles. But here's the neat thing about pistons, they are machined with groves all the way up the skirt, so now unless to smear the skirt, or commonly known as "black death"( or scuffing) then the coating will remain there doing it's job of retaining oil.
The grey or black color is somewhat a byproduct of the process and is the coating itself, but just because you visually cant see it doesn't mean it's not there. In fact, I usually will recommend my customers on tight tolerance motors to even take scotch brite and pre burnish the coating down as the build up is not needed, it's once again just the byproduct from spraying even coat's of the coating. Now on motors that need big clearance like boosted apps I recommend leaving it alone as then it will self burnish as needed and basically fit itself to the cyl. So if the motor is running good and not seeing excessive heat that expands the piston, you get the benefit of having the tighter clearance,IE less slap, piston rock, and keeping the rings square. You can actually burnish and match the piston back to the specified bore with a micrometer and some time, then you know each one it exactly the same clearance.

Disclaimer(lol) most pistons bought pre coated from the piston manufacturer's are just cleaned, silk screened on and then air dry, they don't contain the good heat curing binders that most piston coaters use and they don't prep the skirt with any means of activation(sand blasting) . These coating's usually have a low pressure rating and wear life and are only meant to be used as a break in coating for when the motor is first started. It helps the initial startup and running of the motor before the oil molecules have time to migrate to the cyl walls and piston.
Some manufacturers offer add on coatings now that are custom with better materials . These are usually not shelf stock pistons though.


more to come , when i get back on the computer

Muckman

iTrader: (2)

Simple solution: Coat both head AND pistons.

batboyvaj

tbone you have pics of your new coating?

Tbone

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Muckman &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Simple solution: Coat both head AND pistons. </TD></TR></TABLE>

exactly!
Unfortunately I only will do that if the head is getting new seats and guides. The cure cycle can actually heat the head and if the guide are already loose like on many used heads, they can move or shift more during the cure. Masking the head is a real pain too as sandblast media tends to find it's way into things so the whole thing needs to be sealed up everywhere. i also like to do inside the ex port.
Another thing as far as the heat topic goes in Mike's concern, the fuel coming in also cools the head.