[Prowbar]

Finally got around to hone the block. Also included is a picture of my homemade engine stand.

First I had to mill some spacers to use our hone for these massive bores. Then we honed the existing bores. There's more wear than I like, and not all of it has been honed out. However, I'm confident that this will produce sufficient results.

After all, this is kind of a budget build, and while an overbore might be better, where are you going to get oversize pistons from anyway?

First honing job has been done with coarse stones, to get a good crosshatch in the cylinders.

Because this engine will run on propane from the start, the rings will not really seat in the bores because of the superiority of propane fuels when it comes to preventing cylinder wear. Now I read about this trick a while back in an IMPCO book, which article I posted here on the forum which was about 401 V6's converted to propane.

In that article, they had troubles with the rings seating with the freshly rebuilt engines running on propane from the start. This resulted in excessive oil consumption. They solved this by seating in the rings with a mixture of Bon Ami and a thin oil and turning the engine over by hand. I will be doing the same thing, which involves assembling the engine with crankshaft and pistons, followed by seating the rings by turning over the engine, then taking it apart to clean the parts thoroughly. I'll see whether the first ring will seat with this method as it is still the original chrome-plated ring. Then I can assemble the short block for the last time.

In doing this, I should also achieve a plateau honing effect, which means that the peaks of the material left by the coarse hone will be evened out. The valleys created by the coarse hone should then be still present for oil retention purposes.

I added the article down below. When enlarged the orientation is good.