Technical Dingle ball honing (oh no not again )

Your not going to correct bore size or out of round honing by hand…it’s simply to get the crosshatch back to re ring it, you will be there for days trying to remove any amount of material.

 

I remember finish honing a small block Mopar that we built years ago for bracket racing. We were working in an unused stall in a bottling plant maintenance shop. After honing we rolled the block over to a wash bay to give everything a good hot soap and water scrub-down and blew it dry. The honing pattern looked good, but we decided to wipe the bores down again.

We got some clean, white shop towels and went looking for some kind of solvent. I don't know what this shop used it for, but we found a gallon can of MEK and thought we'd give it a try. Of course at that time none of us really understood just what nasty stuff MEK was. So we grabbed a couple of the clean towels, soaked them with MEK and proceeded to swab down the bores. It was surprising to see just how much more crap we wiped off on those white shop towels from our freshly honed cylinders!

Can't say that I'd recommend using MEK to do the same job these days, even if you can readily buy it. But I'd think that maybe lacquer thinner might do the job pretty well with a lot less potential for hazardous side effects. And leave the cylinder walls cleaner than just scrubbing with hot soap and water.

 

I use WD40 when flex honing works fine. When cleaning the cyls, after a few washes with hot/soapy water and drying it off, I use ATF on white paper towels.

The ATF lifts the honing crap out of the grooves in the metal created by the flex hone. Do not use wax & grease remover or thinners or solvents, it will not lift or remove the honing residue from the cross hatch.

Keep doing it till a white paper towel comes out clean, then you're good to go.

 

^^^This is how I do it.

 

In HS shop, we honed using diesel fuel. Stinky but it worked. In later years I'd use straight 10 weight oil or that 3 in 1 oil from the hardware store.

 

There's always an exception...

There was a thread on Pirate4x4 back in the day (2015 or so) where a guy punched a bore it to 10 over with a dingle ball. It was in a backhoe or tractor or something like that where the engine is structural and the size of the machine exceeded what he had had the capability to split at the time so the engine couldn't come out.

Between all the guess and check and the fact that fairly fine abrasives moving slow cut slowly it took him a ton of time but he did get the bore within service spec at 10 thou over and wound up getting the machine running and using it for at least a couple years. I don't recall if he was able to do it in one hone or if it took multiple.

 

The times I've used a dingle ball hone. Used motor oil or trans fluid as lube, flush it all with diesel, keep wiping cylinders with diesel then gasoline. Block got washed with dish soap / hot water, compressed air, wiped with oil until assembly.

Prefer a hone.

 

You would have to be committed to the project to do that! No doubt it’s possible but I can’t imagine the time it took.

 

I use Simple Green or Castrol degreaser and a stiff nylon floor scrubber pad cut to the diameter of the cylinders to clean after bore & hone. I get used floor pads from the janitor at work, I cut out a few circles slightly over sized of the bore, and use threaded rod with washers and nuts to hold the pads. While spraying degreaser, I run the nylon scrubbers up and down the bores with a drill motor. I know they are clean when the dirty suds turn to clean bubbles. The nylon doesn't remove metal or scratch, and by reversing the motor, it gets all the dirt out of the micro groove in both directions. A clean paper towel test shows no remaining loose material plus all the degreaser spray helps clean the rest of the block.

 

I think the WD 40 is a good choice, but it comes in small quanities usually. Might want to consider something like kerosene or mineral spirits since you can purchase it in larger quanities. The idea is that the fluid not only lubricates somewhat, and doesn't create buildup on the stones......washes away what you are honing. That takes somewhat of a "flow" to keep it washing while providing some lubrication. By lubrication, I don't mean the typical lubrication we think of with oil, just some slickness along with the cleaning effect. A typical inexpensive parts washer with a pump and hose should work well. Put enough fluid in the tank for the pump to function and let the small hose direct fluid onto the hone as its rotating. If you have ever seen a professional honing machine, you will notice the continual flow/flushing while honing. Back in my younger days as a machinist, we used a soluble oil most of the time, mixed with water when precision grinding was done..........and lots of it. It was important to keep the part cool as well as flushing the residue out of the part. They make specialty honing oils $$, but keeping the stones clean and flushed with plenty of fluid is more important than anything.
Then you need to use some clean kerosene (or whatever) and wash the whole block out.

 

have always used a 240 grit three stone hone and lubed with atf mixed with a bit of kerosene then a good power wash it always worked with any type of ring

 

Awesome idea

 

I went to junior high with a guy who blew the engine on his mini-bike, wasted the piston. This was a 2.5 or 3 HP Briggs and Stratton. He comes across a 3.5 HP piston and rod that fit the crank. We "bored" it out using a hone. It took a while (days after school) and we had to run to the parts store for new stones. This is when I found out about fine and coarse stones.

 

The only real advantage of the dingleberry hone is that you don’t tear it up if you send it too deep in the cylinder and hit the webbing in the block.

It’s probably more important to get the bores clean after honing than to fixate on flexible vs Ridgid.
A good factory type hone job will have a plateau finish, where the peaks are cut off, leaving the grooves for oil retention. Not many can do that, or even measure it in their basement or even in their local machine shop.

 

My first engine build a 355 back when I was young, the rings washed immediately and it was a fog machine! IDK if the shop honed it wrong or what but got a guy to ball-hone it and slapped it back together with fresh rings, never smoked again!

Read diesel in a coffee can works good, guy who did mine had a squirt bottle of very thin oil and only made a few passes each cylinder. Bought a 240 ball-hone myself, to refresh that engine someday with bearings n more cast rings. Doesn't smoke but lost a flat-tap cam and while in Rome!

 

Another factor with using a real, or even a spring loaded hone vs ball hone, if you have a worn cylinder with a taper, you really can’t hone it all, compound that with a ring groove. There’s just no contact of the stones.
But OP has a pretty fresh engine, so what ever he uses will work.

 

There's piston ring ridge (circumferential wear at the top of the cylinder) & there's piston ring scratches ( vertical grooves in the vertical walls of a cylinder) . There is no use for any hone with the first , and dependent on severity. , minimal use with the second . If you cut more than .001-.0015 out of a cylinder , you end up with excess piston clearance than decreases piston & ring longevity .

 

There are times when alone in the shop I attempt something I should not, just to prove that I should be committed.

 

My final thought on the dingleberry: Every time I have used one, withe maybe the exception of a couple of 5.0 engines from the eighties with remarkably clean and straight bores, I feel a little dirty and unfulfilled. I know the right thing to do is have the block over bored and machine honed.

Never had a real problem though, but I know it’s a patch job, not a proper (and costly) rebuild.

 

If the finished product doesn't rattle , the compression is normal , doesn't foul plugs & it uses less than a qt. Of oil per thousand ,its fixed , period . Some people spend there lives trying to obtain the unobtainable for what ? Bragging rights , that plus $5 will get you a cup of coffee , way over rated !

 

Ball honed more engines than I can count. Never seen one back from ring wear, or piston scuffing.

Ask Summit how many they sell....dont see people complaining about oil consumption.... or know any.

 

I knew a guy (now deceased) who, in the late '40s, had a '37 Chrysler with a straight 8 that he bought .010 oversize pistons for and honed all eight cylinders to fit. Of course, this was a guy who would rather spend 40 hours than $40.00.

 

I was opposite... ridge cut bore, hone run std old pistons..when skirts started cracking 2yr later, had it bored, 0.030 barely cleaned it up.