Nikasil coated alloy cylinders with 4032 alloy pistons

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Has anyone tried the Alloy cylinders with Nikasil coating? The work of a couple different makers is shown below.

Cast
Nikasil coated alloy cylinders with 4032 alloy pistons


Billet
Nikasil coated alloy cylinders with 4032 alloy pistons


The clearance with 4032 alloy pistons and Nikasil coated alloy cylinders could be tighter than usual. I'm guessing around .003" to .0035" with an uncoated piston or .0015" to .002" with a coated piston as shown below . Has anyone tried this combo and with what clearance? Special order 4032 alloy pistons are shown below and they are amazingly lightweight at only 175grams for 73mm 750s and 183 grams for 77mm 850s.

Nikasil coated alloy cylinders with 4032 alloy pistons


Nikasil coated alloy cylinders with 4032 alloy pistons
 
Wish I could say i've tried them. Hope to say it in the future. I'm at work right now so as to have a alum cylinder solid crank long rod 750 in my retirement.
When your testing tighter clearance and go too far do they tighten slowly and you can tell, shut it down, back to the shop? Do they tend to run well at lower loads and only scuff when rode hot and hard? Do you pull spark plugs and look in for scuffs on walls, if it looks good beat on it more? Or do you do it all on a dyno first?
 
Ever pushing the envelope Jim... :) Awesome potential for our air cooled power plant !
 
I would love to have it, but I think thin steel liners might be better. Wellworthy alloy barrels for Triumphs, used to have a pair of cast iron cylinders cast into the aluminium. The problem was the threaded holes in the cast iron for the head studs used to crack. It might be possible to do similar for a Commando, but through bolt. The problem is always the bit between the two cylinders.
 
What type of piston rings do you use with Nikasil bores ? Even bedding rings in with cast iron bores can be a problem, if you do it too quickly.
Who supplies the super-light pistons - or is that a secret ?
 
Jim, you might want to contact John Snead (G81 Can Cycle here on the forum). He has a good bit of experience with running Maney alloy cylinders with aluminum liners in Norton race bikes. I think they were mostly 750s. Liners were done by Millenium, but I don't know what pistons were used, or any other details.

Ken
 
I'm currently looking into 920 Nikasil Barrels from one of the suppliers above. The issue as I see it is the 920 steel liners are less than 2mm thick, which may be inadequate support for an alloy barrel?
It may be that 824 is as big as is feasible.
I haven't checked, but it would be useful to understand how much spigot is still needed with the long rod/short piston combo?
 
Ken - one of the photos at the top of this thread shows John Sneads barrells being machined. I'd be happy to work with him if he's interested.

B+ Bogus - the other photo is a set of TGA cylinders from UK. He makes them up to 83mm bore for the 1000 cc Maney motor. He makes 850s and up Nikasil only without liners for greater strength. He needs people to push him into making them for the 920 if that would work.

I haven't worked with Norton Nikasil cylinders yet - But I'm involved with making lightweight pistons and longer rods for Nikasil alloy cylinders for Matchless G50 in Europe.
 
I'm currently looking into 920 Nikasil Barrels from one of the suppliers above. The issue as I see it is the 920 steel liners are less than 2mm thick, which may be inadequate support for an alloy barrel?
It may be that 824 is as big as is feasible.
I haven't checked, but it would be useful to understand how much spigot is still needed with the long rod/short piston combo?
I remember checking and yes the spigots can be definitely be shorter with the JS pistons but I can't remember how much.
 
Ken - one of the photos at the top of this thread shows John Sneads barrells being machined. I'd be happy to work with him if he's interested.

B+ Bogus - the other photo is a set of TGA cylinders from UK. He makes them up to 83mm bore for the 1000 cc Maney motor. He makes 850s and up Nikasil only without liners for greater strength. He needs people to push him into making them for the 920 if that would work.

I haven't worked with Norton Nikasil cylinders yet - But I'm involved with making lightweight pistons and longer rods for Nikasil alloy cylinders for Matchless G50 in Europe.
Jim, I guess you know, but TGA is owned today by Andy Molnar. It is Molnar who has done the development and of course he has a huge amount of experience working with singles to fall back on. So the barrels you refer to are the same ones we saw posts about a few months back.
 
The billet barrels we are producing are in process. We have made two prototypes. One of the cylinders is currently in Stan Keyes Interstate and has a little over 1000 miles, with no problems as of this writing. It has been our experience with aluminum Nikasil cylinders, that it greatly extends the life of the bore, so we are working on several design changes to improve features on the cylinders to match longevity we expect from this new design. We will not be selling these cylinders until we get ample testing

As far as the cast cylinders from Andy Molnar. If I had known Andy was working on this, I might not have started on ours. I stand in awe of Andy's work, and hold the opinion that very few people offer the quality of a Molnar product. I own and race a Molnar Manx, and it has run flawlessly for over two years. It has been 99.9% maintenance free. I changed the gearbox from a 6 speed Hemmings to a 4 speed TTI to comply with class rules. Changed plugs and oil, and that is it (except for jets at different altitude tracks). Andy is currently building me a new engine for the Manx (just as a spare, and to maybe play with some porting on the old engine)

As far as pistons and rods: On the 750 Maney cast, alum liner, Nikasiled cylinders that Stan Keyes and I use on 3 race bikes, I believe we are using JS pistons (high compression) and rods. On the prototype 850 billet cylinder we are using MAP rods and pistons (standard compression)
 
I wonder how many on the list would go for a set of road going jugs, not racing stuff. Lighter and better cooling might be attractive option if some one is going for a rebore or has a set of failed ones.
 
I wonder how many on the list would go for a set of road going jugs, not racing stuff. Lighter and better cooling might be attractive option if some one is going for a rebore or has a set of failed ones.
That, of course, is the question. Although we have never had plans to make extremely large runs of the billet units. but I could see these being as popular as maybe the FullAuto heads, and more popular than the billet cases by SBR
 
John you never got back with what you are thinking as to cam follower bores and possible wear
 
John you never got back with what you are thinking as to cam follower bores and possible wear
I mentioned above some areas we are looking at the extend life on the billet cylinders, the follower bores in the cylinder are one of the areas we are looking at as far as a redesign
 
824cc is probably big enough for any Commando engine - bigger is probably only bragging rights. I would have thought that turning a 650cc Triumph engine into a 750 would be easy, but it is not. My friend has one which is giving him all sorts of trouble with vibration.
 
824cc is probably big enough for any Commando engine - bigger is probably only bragging rights. I would have thought that turning a 650cc Triumph engine into a 750 would be easy, but it is not. My friend has one which is giving him all sorts of trouble with vibration.
Good grief Al :rolleyes:

Turning a 650 Triumph into a 750 has to be the easiest big bore hop up possible!

Your mate has obviously got something wrong. Simple as that.

Have you tried a well built 920 Commando by the way...?
 
So who would turn down a 1007 race motor then?
They seem to do OK on the track here in the UK?
Yes but, classes here in France and in Belgium are up to 750 and up to 1000! 920 or 960 is your Norton limit. (960 is 920 81mm bore with 1007 93mm crank, 'Chris' has the only one I know of)

So I would say no thanks. And I did say no thanks when I built my 750 short stroke, it was to take advantage of these classes European classes I have since run in, and to qualify for the F750 class in the UK. I also raced it in UK 1300 twins when built giving me two classes to race in at each meeting, finishing 2nd in the 1300 twins championship in 2015, my first year on the bike. Last raced in it the last time the class was run in 2017, took home trophies!

1007 motors deliver power and torque and lots of it, the question is do you go any faster? probably but it really depends how well your style and abilities can exploit it My best ride of 2015 was in very tricky wet conditions, I passed quite a lot of much bigger engined bikes to do it! Pretty sure I would have been on my ear on a 1007.

Another reason for my choice was that I was using an original frame. 1007 motors will challenge to destruction any part you fit to a bike, including tyres.

Great stuff in the right hands and for teams that can field another bike for 750s and to run when the big bore bike breaks.

Really 1007s are best left alone by the rest of us! It would be cheaper to build the smaller motor, but not enough for that to be your primary concern for a new build. And of course now that Maney isn't making cranks, cases or barrels, or modifying heads to suit it isn't as off the shelf as it might have been.

And a question for you, when and where did you last see a 1007 motor actually race?

Not sure I have seen one since 2016!
 
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