main bolt to stud, line hone?

[colormebad]

I have all my engines torque plate bored & honed' but craft racing said they have done them with and without & not enough differance was seen...

[Dodge Freak]

My replys are to the 1 smart@ss no it all line hone queen only...To No ONE Else...Don't reply to any topic i ask ?'s about and i won't reply to any of urs....Im a grown man ' and this is america and i do as i please.....

Ah, you sure you don't have another country mixed up Maybe its just me but I find it easier to do as I please in like say Toronto, ha ha ha.

Lets try to keep it friendly and on topic. Yes, I am guilty of going off topic too

[colormebad]

No Problem! I will sit back and just reply to the ones that are nicer...I won't post anything else except to the ?s thats being asked nicely..I will also respond nicely.....

[Warp Speed]

I have all my engines torque plate bored & honed' but craft racing said they have done them with and without & not enough differance was seen...

With those types of results, I would definatly question their testing methods, or combo for sure!!

[colormebad]

Back years ago this one older man never used a plate on my older 351 blocks & they were some of the best running and lasted longer engines i built....But like i said' if your spending money on everything else ' i do beleive its well worth the time to use the plate & not take any chances.....

[CNC BLOCKS]

I have all my engines torque plate bored & honed' but craft racing said they have done them with and without & not enough differance was seen...

Back years ago this one older man never used a plate on my older 351 blocks & they were some of the best running and lasted longer engines i built....But like i said' if your spending money on everything else ' i do beleive its well worth the time to use the plate & not take any chances.....

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[falcongeorge]

....Im a grown man.....

Some on here may consider that open to debate...

[JBV-HEADS]

I always hate the hone argument. But yes, there are blocks that have blind bosses that are far enough from the cylinder casing that torque plate honing has no advantage what so ever. The thread pull just does not reach the cylinder casing to deform it. They are the exception and not the rule though. If the motor starts with a C then you better torque plate it or waste a good set of racing rings. Since I was there when the test was run I feel I must let others know. Old W block. It was a beer bet. 3 of us show up and the hole is honed without a plate. Cylinder was cleaned by brake cleaner into a coffee can. Blue sprayed on and dried. Plate was put on and torqued down. Dry 300 stone (years ago) was put in and the button tapped. No light areas at all. Consistent all the way around. I bought the beer. We talked about it and I was the only one who did not know, so I got picked on. They are good friends, but hey, it’s still fun to win a beer bet and a head guy isn’t going to know unless he experiments on the side. As a general rule just about any 2 valve head block should be torque plate honed. The newer stuff is a different animal and the engine design it’s self will dictate what needs to be done. But yes there are blocks that do not need nor benefit from a torque plate. If a client ask for it then it is supplied just because of warrantee issues. A guy bends a ring when he puts it in and you talked him out of it, he thinks you’re the cause?????? Gotta play it safe. Good luck,

Joe

[Wolfplace]

While I will agree there are blocks that do not move around much if at all I do not agree with blanket statements like
If the bolts are blind & far enough away or any other blanket rule
It just does not work that way
If you do enough performance block work you will bolt a torque plate to everything you hone regardless of where the bolts are because not every block follows the same rules regardless of whether one got by pretty round without a torque plate

You will find that in some cases after bolting a plate & gasket to a block that one cylinder is as close to round as you can measure
The next one may be 3 or 4 thou out

I just finished a 460 Ford which has the bolts quite a ways from the bores
I can guarantee you it was not round when a plate was installed & torqued, not even close

Yet most of the Dart blocks I do (Chevy) move very little with the bolts right on the edge of the cylinder
Most but not all so there is no way I would consider doing one without a plate

There is more going on than just where the bolts are assuming you are using a gasket with the plate as you should be
You may find just going from one gasket to another will change the bore,, hell just going from a bolt to stud can change things,,,

If you want a real eye opener & have access to a few machine shops or one that you can wander around in,,,
Take a few blocks that are going to need a sleeve & measure all the other bores on one side
Now bore it for a sleeve,,, nothing else just bore it
Go back & measure the other cylinders & tell me what you find
Now put the sleeve in & see what happens
Bore the sleeve & see what happens to the adjacent cylinders

Again not in every case but in many the results seen should give you an idea of what removing metal or bolting things to a block may do,,,

From what I have seen over the years & from feedback from shops that I consider very good,,,,
I will take what I consider the safer route & use a torque plate

[CNC BLOCKS]

While I will agree there are blocks that do not move around much if at all I do not agree with blanket statements like
If the bolts are blind & far enough away or any other blanket rule
It just does not work that way
If you do enough performance block work you will bolt a torque plate to everything you hone regardless of where the bolts are because not every block follows the same rules regardless of whether one got by pretty round without a torque plate

You will find that in some cases after bolting a plate & gasket to a block that one cylinder is as close to round as you can measure
The next one may be 3 or 4 thou out

I just finished a 460 Ford which has the bolts quite a ways from the bores
I can guarantee you it was not round when a plate was installed & torqued, not even close

Yet most of the Dart blocks I do (Chevy) move very little with the bolts right on the edge of the cylinder
Most but not all so there is no way I would consider doing one without a plate

There is more going on than just where the bolts are assuming you are using a gasket with the plate as you should be
You may find just going from one gasket to another will change the bore,, hell just going from a bolt to stud can change things,,,

If you want a real eye opener & have access to a few machine shops or one that you can wander around in,,,
Take a few blocks that are going to need a sleeve & measure all the other bores on one side
Now bore it for a sleeve,,, nothing else just bore it
Go back & measure the other cylinders & tell me what you find
Now put the sleeve in & see what happens
Bore the sleeve & see what happens to the adjacent cylinders

Again not in every case but in many the results seen should give you an idea of what removing metal or bolting things to a block may do,,,

From what I have seen over the years & from feedback from shops that I consider very good,,,,
I will take what I consider the safer route & use a torque plate

X2

We had a 351-W block we had to go through it had some issues from another and it was a .060 over and the plate did make a change on that block only because of the bigger bore which probably made the cylinders weaker.

Same with the Dart and Bowtie blocks the bigger the bore there seems to me more distortion.

[falcongeorge]

I remember Bob Glidden commenting in Car Craft in the '70s that he didnt use engine stands as it caused the back bores to distort too much. Has anyone played with "mapping" as described in the old Direct Connection manual? Maybe we should be starting a new thread on bore distortion...

[ProPower engines]

Mapping the bore is the way I learned and it wasn't till I was doing some Mopar stuff with my mentor that it became real clear that it is 1 process in the build that gets over looked.

We had and still have a customer that runs big inch stock block Mopar stuff. Drag racing is his game but when he brought a special made torque plate from a big name builder along with a block to be bored complete with instructions on how to prep this block we were concerned about concentricity when the head was on.
Long story short doing it as requested by customer resulted in less that great leak down after break in and after we tore it apart to check the bores we could see the head plate alone was the issue.
We put a head being used on the block then mapped the bore then replaced it with the plate and seen the difference.
Now I use the heads to be used as a gadge for how much the bores distort then simulate that with a head plate.
Never an issue since then with ring seal

[Kevin Johnson]

I remember Bob Glidden commenting in Car Craft in the '70s that he didnt use engine stands as it caused the back bores to distort too much. Has anyone played with "mapping" as described in the old Direct Connection manual? Maybe we should be starting a new thread on bore distortion...

I noted in the factory shop pics of the new mod engine from Ford that they were using stands that attached to both sides of the engine.

[Kevin Johnson]

Mapping the bore is the way I learned and it wasn't till I was doing some Mopar stuff with my mentor that it became real clear that it is 1 process in the build that gets over looked.

We had and still have a customer that runs big inch stock block Mopar stuff. Drag racing is his game but when he brought a special made torque plate from a big name builder along with a block to be bored complete with instructions on how to prep this block we were concerned about concentricity when the head was on.
Long story short doing it as requested by customer resulted in less that great leak down after break in and after we tore it apart to check the bores we could see the head plate alone was the issue.
We put a head being used on the block then mapped the bore then replaced it with the plate and seen the difference.
Now I use the heads to be used as a gadge for how much the bores distort then simulate that with a head plate.
Never an issue since then with ring seal

Do you find it an advantage to have hot coolant in the block while using the torque plate?

[wjnielsen]

Yay! Post #150!!!

You haven't dealt with Steve BOZO!!!! Friggen JA of the year every year!!!! I really hope someone with balls will read this!
Because I don't have a $100 thousand running balance with him I am a piece O crap and will never get a SNAP ON Anything covered under warranty!!!!
(snip)

Had the same experience up here in WA. My investment in Snap tools went well into the five digit range, but even if it was only five bucks... HONOR THE WARRANTY YOU SOLD THE TOOL WITH, DOUCHEBAGS!

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Oh, and in case a snap dealer sees this, my name is William Nielsen, and my phone # is 206-718-BILL (no shit); so I'm not some internet cowboy hiding in anonymity behind his screen name.

Whats wrong with checking alingment of the main bores using a precision straight edge and feeler gauges?

You're trying to check concentricity of five round holes with a ruler. It's going to be somewhat challenging to be totally accurate. You've got to hold it in EXACTLY the same spot across all five, or it's gonna' show you gaps under it (imagine how it'd look if you had the straightedge in the bottom of the #5 saddle and halfway up on the #1... well, you could be a little 'skewed' like that and not visually be able to tell).

It's obviously better than nothing, and will pick out the grossly warped blocks.

Oh hey WAIT A MINUTE! The magazines tell us that we save money in the long run by using aftermarket (usually off-shore) heads,cranks and rods, because it costs too much to machine the old factory stuff! Why, they wouldn't be mis-leading us would they??!!

Uh, yeah, I used to drink the publishing company koolaid... twenty years ago. I started suspecting that some stuff was written to make advertisers look good. Flash forward to finding this forum, to find I had drastically underestimated the situation.

-Bill