I found this cylinder on Ebay and won the auction, after sending a few emails I found out their was a small problem with the cylinder, it seems one of the head studs had been been damaged and the owner discovered this after taking a closer look at the cylinder, the owner agreed to ship me the cylinder before payment so I could take a closer look at the damaged hole. First look when the cylinder arrived it was easy to see that the last piston was a seizure because their was a bunch of aluminum stuck to the cylinder so the first thing I did was remove the head, it came off with resistance and as I suspected one of the studs was slightly bend, no big deal to replace the stud, I suspect it had been hit sometime in the past, I removed all the studs and they all came out easy I noticed their was a thin layer of clear silicone sealer on the head and top of the cylinder, silicone is not a good sealer to use on head gaskets since it can not take the pressures involved, sealing the water jackets would be ok but not trying to seal the cylinder pressures, a O-ring would be better for this, it also looks like they sand blasted the head and top of the cylinder sealing surfaces but I had planned to lap both to ensure the sealing surfaces are completely flat. After the aluminum was removed with muratic acid I honed the cylinder slightly not really removing a measurable amount of material but just enough to see the wear patterns of the cylinder and to take some measurements to see what bore the cylinder was and to see if it was out of round or tapered, the bore measures 3.566 at the largest point it is also .0007 out of round and has .005 taper. More info on this type modification. The story continues Here are some pictures before the aluminum was removed and the cylinder honed.
The last piston had suffered a 4 corner seizure and left a large more than normal amount of aluminum stuck to the exhaust side of the cylinder, I suspect the engine did the 4 corner seizure thing then the owner was able to get it started and continued to run it until the final seizure took it to the point where it would not run again, have seen this trick many times in the past, they think just because it will still run it is ok to keep going, I have also seen guys have a slight seizure
Below is the damaged hole it looks like it was drilled and tapped possibly for a Heli-coil but the thread repair was never completed I will have to buy a Heli-coil kit for that size and see if the thread sizes are the same if not I will make a aluminum insert and install to make the repair.
More 5-23-02
