Meehanite Cast Iron Available Locally?

[PeterT]

Just curious, when the piston is hard plated like that, what is the matching prescribed liner bore protocol? Is it un-plated alloy or plated with something different?
I'm having trouble visualizing the break in equivalent of the modern race engines - 'hard' tapered liner & 'soft' cylindrical piston that molds itself into the magic barrel shape. But all this is above my pay grade.

 

[carrdo]

Hi Peter,

In the case of the Howler 15, the liner is specified as unplated "Leadloy" steel. My take on Leadloy is it was a good choice for cylinder liners where oil was always present but it is a terrible choice for any other use as you can almost hear it rust. If you leave a clean piece of Leadloy out in your workshop, even when using dehumidification, after a week it will be visibly rusty.

 

[PeterT]

Yup, I am familiar. I use 12L14 quite a bit in shop because it turns so nice. Its used for liners & cylinders in model gasoline engines, but methanol loves to attract water. The premix oil can't keep corrosion at bay. Some of the synthetic oils are also problematic from that standpoint. I've long been in the habit of partial teardown & flooding parts with storage oil over the winter. I heard Cox used 12L14 in many parts which to this day still mystifies me.

 

[Bandit]

Hi Peter,
In the case of the Howler 15, the liner is specified as unplated "Leadloy" steel. My take on Leadloy is it was a good choice for cylinder liners where oil was always present but it is a terrible choice for any other use as you can almost hear it rust. If you leave a clean piece of Leadloy out in your workshop, even when using dehumidification, after a week it will be visibly rusty.

 

[Bandit]

Had a fast look at that meehanite site from the maker, a bit of learning there! Anyway, what I did seem to see was that many cast iron crankshaft are made from that type of cast iron. I think the big old Cat crank would likely be a forged steel unit, many heavy duty cranks are forged. Run of the mill north American cranks are cast iron.
Maybe check an engine rebuilder if any around, for an older -60s to 90s engine cranks, should be some wiped ones in the junk pile Generally can tell if cast by the parting line, cast- very narrow, sharp line, forged- a wide ground line. The counter throws will have some nice chunks of iron without oiling holes.
Happy hunting, also noticed cam shafts can be the same, but likely lots of heat treating on them.

 

[PeterT]

On a model engineering forum I frequent, this place was mentioned as a source for custom rings. They supply to a lot of the smaller commercial engines & performance engines. Not of interest to the subject matter of sourcing CI locally, but they have some interesting technical information of alloy materials & such FWIW.

Catalogue | METEOR PISTON S.r.l.

www.meteorpiston.com

 

[carrdo]

Hi All,

Maidstone Model Engineering and College Engineering Supply in the UK carry grade 250 Meehanite cast iron and they both can supply it in small quantities. The minimum size of round solid bar starts at 1" (25 mm and larger) and they can supply many other shapes as well. Grade 250 Meehanite is a fine engineering grade which can be hard chromed to suit such purposes as I wanted it for.

I broke down and ordered a 300 mm long 25 mm dia piece. The price was reasonable (about $15. Canadian) but the shipping here was 3x that cost.

 

[PeterT]

Has it arrived or its being shipped into this postal sh*tstorm?

I'm interested to follow your project. Now have you made any inroads as to where you will get it hard chromed & how much? Reason I mention is somewhere in my travels I read that certain shops require certain dimensional undersize depending on their process or equipment or bumpiness or longevity of the bond. A clumsy way of saying the chrome thickness varies. That would be seem to factor into your machining?

 

[carrdo]

Hi Peter,

Only just shipped out today. Probably postal.

I haven't dealt with the chroming problem yet. I will need to talk to some of my model engineering buddies and see what they know (if anything).