Yesterday I started a friends engine assembly.
It is a B16A with Crower Econ Rods and ACL bearings.

In my past builds I could set the rodbearing clearance to 0.0015" - what I desire. (Mostly EagleRods).

Yesterday I could mesure a rodbearing clearance of just 0.001"

Do you think it is ok? Or should I hone the rod to reach 0.0015".
What are your suggestions or experiences?

Thanks

 

I have no experience with acl bearings. I measured my crank journals and my rod big ends and ordered the appropriate honda bearings. I came up with 3 different sizes...not one size fits all...

 

too tight, you should be aiming for around .0015-.0017 IMO
if acl's are speced to a yellow/green honda bearing, youll probably need some brown or black one's

 

Actually it is the other way around the ACL's are close to a brown/green. Try an oem yellow or pink bearing.

 

you need to use some honda bearings to get your size. do not hone the rod, that will change your bearing crush and lead to failure. .001" is extremely tight, i wouldnt build a stock engine there.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jared &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you need to use some honda bearings to get your size. do not hone the rod, that will change your bearing crush and lead to failure. .001" is extremely tight, i wouldnt build a stock engine there.</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by hybrid_KJ &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Actually it is the other way around the ACL's are close to a brown/green. Try an oem yellow or pink bearing.</TD></TR></TABLE>

good call KJ, i was thinking *** backwards.

 

I mesured different ACL bearings with different prodution dates.
I found out that bearings made 5/5/05 are thicker than bearings that were made somewhere in june 2004.

So I used the "older" bearings to get the right clearances.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jared &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you need to use some honda bearings to get your size. do not hone the rod, that will change your bearing crush and lead to failure. .001" is extremely tight, i wouldnt build a stock engine there.</TD></TR></TABLE>

ERL actually did a light hone on my rods to be able to use my ACL bearing set. I think that small amounts are fine as my engine is holding up just fine.

 

That seems backwards to me. Why machine a part to fit, when you can buy a thinner bearing for 20 bucks? But I guess if you REALLY want consistency with all your bearings go for it.

 

I forgot who had this issue on HT, but he ended up mixing ACL's with Honda bearings, pinks if I remember due to his particular size issue. And by mixing I don't mean one rod honda, three rods acl - he used acl and honda on the same rod. IIRC, you can 'adjust' the ACL size with .0005" or so (whatever 1 step larger/smaller is with honda bearings).

 

I don´t like mixing different bearing manufactures - not on different rods and not on one and the same rod.
I also know that a several engine builders hone rods or main journals a littlebit to get the right clearance. This is what I would also prefer if changing bearings doesn´t bring the wanted effect. Of course you have to take care not to negativ the bearing crush.
What are you experiences in this case.
Would like to hear different oppinions.

 

You can try swapping your rods around. You may be able to adjust clearances that way.

 

thats way too tight, you could hone the rod but then you risk the chance of not having proper bearing crush... or maybe even too much

 

I dont know why I never thought about that - I just had this conversation with my engine shop. Yes Honda makes diff thickness bearings but the difference in size is the ID not the OD. Meaning, you technically should have the crank journal machined down, not the big end of the rod (but just get an oem bearing and stop being crazy). I believe thats what wantboost is refering to with bearing crush, if the rod big end is honed out too much the bearings wont meet, too small and the bearings will crush.

 

you shouldnt have to touch the crank. if there isnt a honda bearing that will allow you to acheive a clearance within factor spec, you have an issue with your rods

 

I work at a engine machine shop just hone the rods, .0005 is not going to change the bearing crush.
also how are you checking your clearence. If you are using plastic gauge dont trust it. you should have a machine shop check the clearence with a dial bore gauge. If you set every thing up and bring it in they shouldn't charge you much.

you can run .0015-.0022 on the rods with out any problems

good luck with the build

 

I mesure everything with a dial bore gauge and then "double check" it with plastigage.
This is not the first buildt I made. I just wanted to know if more people regard 0.001" as a too small clearance as do. What I also wanted to know was how your experiences are with honing out the rod.
I asked several machine shop (for example ERL) and they also suggested me to hone them out a little.

Thanks

 

If you don't like mixing/matching bearings, then you should also be admitting that one of the two sets of bearings is made imporperly. If we are talking about clearances in the ten-thousandths, then any issue from mixing parts will also be evident when you use the parts by themselves. If ACL's are bad, then you'd see failures of not just the unchecked rebuilds (tight or loose), but also controlled rebuilds like yours.

If you have access to honing the rod, I guess that's how you should do it. I just have always prefered the methods that leave previous dimentions intact, especially if there's a chance it could go wrong and make the part useless. I've seen crazier/stupider stuff happen in machine shops.

 

Just wanted to let you know that I decided to hone the rods a little. Now I got a clearance of 0.0016" on all four rods.

Thanks