Hone grit

So I want to hone my cylinders but I'm not sure what grit I should get. They offer them in 240, 180 and 120 grit. I don't want much removed. Jut some light rust and to get a nice cross hatch. What grit would you recommend?

I use 280 grit stones for my own hone and it leaves a nice cross hatch pattern in the cylinder bores. Use a very light oil or mix the oil with kerosene or mineral spiris to thin it and let the oil flush away the grit as you hone the bore. Be sure that the stones do not go below or above the bore as you hone it and don't let it come out as the stones may break. Use a slow speed drill to power it and move it up and down with a slow steady rythmn.

After honing I always use hot soapy water to clean the grit out of the bore and repeat it as needed till a white rag comes out clean, then I dry the bores and coat them with some good oil to keep them from rusting again.

Also remember that if the bore is out of round or tapered it will be that way when you finish honing it also. It takes a boring bar to correct those conditions.

Gene Davis Tennille, Ga.

the finer the better, u dont want some old course stones for that. its all in the job u do as gene said. the only thing different i do is
hone with a fast rythmn and fast speed, as that how my drill is. i am sure u must have read up on it anyhow. most important it to get your
crosshatch 45 degree's and the cleaning with a white rag.

When I was your age, every Napa store had a
machine shop. I took my engines to them to have
the cranks turned, ground valves, bored
cylinders, and reconditioned cams. They did all
the machining work.
My recommendation; find a machine shop and
ask them.
I can't find a machine shop at Napa store in
Terre Haute. Machine shops have all vanished. I
was told there is still a machine shop in the
middle of town in a low rent district.

Just my opinion, I think machine shops went out
of business because engines last longer and very
few people are rebuilding their engines. I haven't rebuilt an engine in over 30 years.

In my experience, we do not have enough information here to respond properly to this question. Anyone who is trying to answer this without knowing the condition of cylinders is really just shooting in the dark. Have you measured them? Is there taper in the bores/ Is there a ridge around the top? Why is there rust? New rings? New pistons? Lots more questions need to be addressed.

Honing is the final step in a series of processes designed to help engines last longer and to help seat rings. Done alone, it can make things worse.

Depending on your future plans for the engine, you might want to rethink just honing. If the cylinder walls are not straight, the honing stones will only hit the high spots. If you keep going until you have a nice cross hatch pattern everywhere, your cylinder will too big for your existing rings and pistons. VERY FEW cylinder walls are straight anymore if the engine has many hours on it.

Not saying you cannot hone it, but striving for a nice even crosshatch with a drill powered 3 stone hone in a used cylinder can easily go bad in a hurry.

i hope i am correct, but this is a young teenager that is going to do a first project. i think he got another block for his john deere B.
and is going to get this tractor running and painted. a person cant be expecting him to do a true professional restoration. its basically
learn as you go thing. i know exactly what he is doing , as thats how i started also . no money no tools but do the best you can with what
u have. and once finished school i got a job and put myself through the apprenticeship program and had my red seal mechanic's ticket at 22
years old. and now old and retired. so if thats his plan that how you get experience in mechanical work is by doing it then you have a lot
better knowledge once the instructors are explaining stuff.he has posted a few picture of this tractor and when and if it gets running i
will be very impressed. i dont expect him to have things to the factor spec's ., them old john deere's or any old engine will run worn out.
so a person cant be expecting him to be doing major machine shop work here, its just letting him know what will work and what wont. at least
thats how i see it. all the best for him.

rustred, thank you! gm

For a rusty cylinder I would use 180. Never tried anything
more coarse than that. In a few seconds you will see
where the low spots are, mostly where the rings stop.
When these areas become apparent, stop. You are done.
If the rust is in these low spots, do not try to hone them
out. You will only oversize the cylinder. The rust will have
to be removed with steel wool or sandpaper. A ball hone
would take care of this, but a straight stone hone shows
how bad the cylinder really is, and lend a clue to whether
it should be resized. A ball hone will make it look like a
fresh bore job even though the cylinder could be a real
mess. To their credit, they do blunt the corner of the step
where the ring travel ends, so the new rings dont strike it
during operation. A straight stone hone will not do this.

I agree things dont have to be perfect except carb and mag on an old JD. I started out with a wartime B many years ago we called it the parts tractor and I still have it! Ever see a manifold like that?

Yep, USE to be here in town we had the Napa store and Penn Motors , We bought the head surfacer when the OLD guy retired as the young kids did not want to learn the trade . same went with Penn Motor . then another place closed up and another one by one closed . My one friend had one of the best machine shops with the latest equipment and was swamped with work and tried to teach his kid the trade but he did not have and interest and Dick suffered a major heart attach . He offered it to me but where was i going to come up with a quarter Mill. and build a new shop to move into , then ya also have to play the game with the EPA and they will hound you to death and fine you at the drop of a hat. He got nailed over his hot tank that had been used for many years and had to remove it have a Hazmat team come in and clean and haul it and the chemicals away at and outlandish price then spend gobbs of money on a new EPA APPROVED CLEANING EQUIPMENT AN PAY TO HAUL THE BY PRODUCT AWAY . All the GOOD old machine shops are now gone i think we are now down to just one left in the county . Young people don't want to get there hands dirty . When i was a kid working for the construction company We did everything in House as there was a complete automotive machine shop there and a couple OLD GUYS that knew everything IF a big engine went down and the crank needed turning it got pulled out in one side of the repair bays and wheeld back into the machine shop and placed on the crank grinder or if it needed welded up then it went onto the crankshaft welder , a block needed line bored then it got line bored . This is where i learned some of my skills along with my friend Dick .

I can honestly say it probably doesn't matter

the bores are evidently used and worn and not perfect anyway

A ball hone of the correct size would probably do as much to remove glaze and rust from the cylinder without over sizing the bore

Paul

It's worth noting that there are three types of commercial hones, 1) the rigid hone, which usually has two stones and two guide shoes that expand / contract radially without enabling taper, 2) the glaze-breaker hone with three stones and no shoes that will follows a taper, and the ball hone that looks much like a wire-bristle bottle brush with abrasive balls at the ends of the bristles. Bought new, the rigid hone runs several hundred dollars, the glaze-breaker hone runs twenty to forty dollars, and the ball somewhere in between the other two types.

There is also a home-made version, sometimes called a fly-burr hone, that is essentially a partially-split shaft that holds a doubled-back-on-itself sandpaper that is long enough to curl most of the way around the bore being honed. )Sometimes a layer of polyethylene sheet is sandwiched between the layers of sandpaper to make it stiffer.) The shank in chucked in a drill motor, and the sandpaper inserted into the cylinder . . . allowing the sandpaper to work against the inside of the cylinder. To paraphrase John Muir -- the author of the 1960s classic How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive --
the people who can afford the commercial hones consider fly-burr hones crude. But they do work, and I strongly suspect that the inventor of the ball hone was inspired by the fly-burr hone.

I think this is the point at which Fritz suggests you stop honing. I used a 3 stone spring hone, 240 grit so the cross hatching is faint. It's also not the 45 degrees that is suggested by many. I'll have to work on my speed and rhythm. I used a ridge reamer to take the ridge out before I removed the pistons. The other cylinder is so far untouched, No rust or pits. The hone came off eBay, for about $30 used and virtually brand new. Good luck Andrew. steve