Cylinder home and out of round

Will a cylinder hone make the out of round worse or better? I have an engine that is at the limits of out of round and wondering if it will make it worse or not. It doesn't need much honing just a little blemish or two.

hone will not make it any better--needs to be bored

Depends it you use a hone or glaze breaker. They're often confused. A hone will make it round and straight if it's used properly. Glaze breaker will follow any contours and only improve the finish. In your case, check your size carefully. It may be that by the time you get it round the diameter will be out of spec.

(quoted from post at 13:42:48 10/30/15) Depends it you use a hone or glaze breaker. They're often confused. A hone will make it round and straight if it's used properly. Glaze breaker will follow any contours and only improve the finish. In your case, check your size carefully. It may be that by the time you get it round the diameter will be out of spec.

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Hone and glaze-breaker are the same thing. Neither one will cure an out-of-round cylinder. A boring bar is the only way to fix it.

A hone will clean up the walls. You would need to spend a lot of time to realy remove much material unless you had a very severe stone and lots of time.. Just bust the glaze.

Exactly what Rustyfarmall said . What exactly are you trying to do ? Clean up a bore and use the same piston new rings only ? If you are measuring and it is out of round to book spec then it would be the next size piston that the bore cleans up at.

A Lisle Rigid Cylinder Hone or a Sunnen Cylinder Hone will true up your cylinders If you can stay under max wear limits.If it is at the wear limit now I would re bore it with new pistons, or if it has sleeves,get new sleeves and pistons.Wear limits mean just that! I won't last to long and it will be past the wear limit.You would be just throwing parts money away,and have a poor rebuild that will burn oil in a short amount of time. A good rebuild and you will be money ahead.

a ridged sunen hone will fix out of round, taper and bellmouth, you need skill to do it and many cycles of honeing and measuring as you hone out the part you want to make bigger. there are 2 stones and 2 wipers, the snones and wipers index out like a rack and pinion off the knurled nuts in the center.

As mentioned below, a rigid hone will do the trick, but if you have never used one, best let someone who has had some experience with them do it for you.

If it is only at the limit why do anything? Wear limits are the acceptable tolerance for reassembly and operation.

I have done quite a bunch of cylinders with a ridged hone & coarse stones to start. Run it dry & you will be surprised how fast it cuts cast iron. Finish with fine stones & oil.

Good advice so far. A glaze breaker (spring loaded hone) or dingle berry hone (the ones that look like bottle brushes with little balls on the ends) will do nothing to help you if the cylinder is out of round. If it's not too bad, then a Sunnen rigid type hone, like the ones posted about already, will work. I've used one many times to round out engine cylinder bores, as well as hydraulic cylinder bores. Again, this will work if the bore isn't too bad. If it's really bad, then having it bored out to the next size, or having the cylinder re-sleeved, would be the best choice.

That all said, if the bore is already at it's limits, then honing isn't going to help as it will usually take the cylinder out of tolerance before you get it back round. Even if it rounds out, it's already at the limit, so the life expectancy of the engine would be short to say the least as it'll be worn out from the word go, if rebuilt.

I have used a rigid Sunnen Hone to recondition many blocks where I could get pistons in .010 over the current bore. Many of them were single cylinder Kohler engines from Cub Cadets but I have also taken .020" out of a Ford 391 and .030" from a Chevy 250.

Use coarse stones dry until you are about .002 from the final desired size. Then use a medium stone with oil until you are about .0005 - .001 from the final desired size. Then finish off with the proper fine stones with oil to get the proper piston fit and finish on the cylinder walls.

The most I have taken out is .250" in one cylinder in a Continental engine in a Massey Harris 101 Senior. The cylinder had a crack so I honed it out and pressed in a repair sleeve and then took that sleeve back to standard bore.

My 2444 has .010 over pistons in it since I wanted to leave the cylinders as small as possible to allow for additional overhauls in the future. There was one cylinder that did not clean up completely, there was a spot about the size of a nickle that still showed a bit of wear. I chose to leave it rather than going .020" over. If I had sent the block out to a machine shop I'm sure they would have bored it to .030" and not been concerned about future overhauls.

the cylinder is within specs. I am needing to get rid of a few blemishes. I am not trying to get it round, just wanting to make sure a hone won't make it worse and be out of spec.