Piston scuffing

motoddrob

motoddrob

Hero member
Location
S/W Australia
Is it normal to have some scuffing marks on the skirts front and back of the pistons? No gouging, the anti friction coating on the ross pistons have worn off. The bores still have the cross hatch from the original hone, but show where the pistons are contacting. Motor has done 3000 kays.
 
yes, is normal
coaters say anti friction material is still embedded in the skirt, have my doubts
 
Thanks Red. Wasn't sure what 3000km bores suppose to look like. They're pretty flogged out when I normally take the barrels off!!
The wear is really fuck all so I wasn't panicking just yet!
That .5 base gasket was a prick to remove!!
Cheers
 
Common, Don't worry about it.
Makes you wonder where all that Teflon goes - Clean the filter and change the oil.
 
Pretty sure Teflon is an ingredient in the oil treatment Slick 50, so loose Teflon in an engine wouldn't overly worry me.
It's chemically bonded to your frying pans/pistons/whatever.
 
Then again it might not.
There have been may such discussions over the years and the conclusion seems to be that wet clutches are not really affected.
 
Grant said:
Pretty sure Teflon is an ingredient in the oil treatment Slick 50, so loose Teflon in an engine wouldn't overly worry me.
It's chemically bonded to your frying pans/pistons/whatever.
Click to expand...

Hi Grant,

Chips of Teflon going off a piston are roughly 10.000 times larger than the particles in Slick 50... No worry though, they will end up either in the "filter" or in the oil slingers, for sure... PTFE of the right quality will not cause any clutch slipping.

@Simon: there are some technics to make Teflon stick to metal (commonly used in pans and pots, now replaced by Ceramic coating). It is not to be mixed up though with teflon that you can buy as a bar (to make footrest out of it f.e. as Phil Todd does), different material as far as I know. But then, I am not a specialist for these materials...

Don't want to go into anti-friction coating details again, as these discussions always end up in a kind of religion-discussion, just like oil- or tyre-threads...

I know what effect Slick50 and SX6000 had on engine parts I treated with it. All I can say is I will always use it again where needed. Cheers
 
depends on what you call long. Had it in my bike for roughly 10.000Km until we took the engine appart for tuning. roughly 5.000km after the tuning, we treated the engine again. Effect wasn't that big anymore which I explain to myself as follows: Gearbox and many other parts still had slight coating on it, only replaced parts were 2 bearings and the pistons really, so the additional treatment did not have enough additional surfaces to show a larger effect. Haven't taken the engine appart ever since, but the results on most engines I treated (including a Porsche gearbox with SX6000 for gearboxes) convinced me completely. More modern engines though seem to show almost no difference, but on older engines like our Laverdas, the results are very obvious. I am not getting paid on any PTFE related products btw., I am simply a convinced customer. ;)
 
I put Slick 50 in my old Saab Turbo that had piston slap and also in an old car gearbox that was a bit noisy.

So not much to lose with these old bangers! But I must say the noise quietened down significantly on both, most impressively the piston slap on start up was all but absent after a few weeks of running.
When using this stuff in cars change the oil filter as the PTFE bits end up in it.

I have not been brave enough to try it on a 'good' engine, I think if you put decent oil in then the wear and tear is kept to a minimum anyway.

 
You gunna get some scuffing no matter what purely by design

As for oil additives such as slack 50 ........................here is an interesting article from the other side so to speak .....fact or fiction you decide

http://skepdic.com/slick50.html

 
And here:
http://www.skepdic.com/comments/slickcom.html

There is an awful lot of chit chat which some will find quite interesting, although quite dated now.

I think that oils have advanced so much that such additional additives have become largely redundant whether they work or not.
 
as I said, it is just like with tire or oil threads: who has used it knows it, others rely on opinions, mostly of people that have never tested it. most of these articles on the web are written by people who have never tried the product but rely on "official" tests. I am working for an american Software company. We have done so many tests against competitive products to show ours is better, so I know how it works...: You look for a niche where your product fits best and the other product has a challenge and that is what you test. Or you do it like one of our competitors: you simply claim you are #1 on the market and over time, people do believe that and with that, they request that product and you become #1...

Back to Slick50...

I had cars where Slick50 showed almost no result and I had bikes where it had so significant and obvious results that nobody could deny it. And it is a repeatable result in every Laverda I used it on, but not with the same grade of result. Engine age, condition before the treatment etc. is influencing the outcome massively. The first was my Jota, mid of the 90's. The bike was a pig to ride, almost impossible to adjust and really ran like shaking a bag of beans.

I warmed the bike up, put Slick50 in and rode to the next highway and gave her a go. Only after roughly 20 Kilometers, I left the highway to turn into the opposite direction. Idle had gone up from 1.200 to roughly 2.700 revs  :o . I turned idle down and entered the highway again, giving her a real pul of throttle. Engine pulled more freely with every kilometer, shifting was way easier. When I left the highway again, idle had again gone up over 2.000. I turned it down to roughly 1000 (which wasn't possible before, bike simply stalled if I put it below 1200) and went home. I put on the sync tester and synced and adjusted the carbs. After that - believe it or not - I could go down to 500 revs with idle without the bike stalling. For mechanical safety I put it back to 1.000 however. As a side effect: the RR oil temperature gauge normally showed between 90? and 110? oil temperature before the treatment during normal operation, in a traffic jam it even went up to 130? sometimes... scaring... afterwards I never had the bike reaching the 100? again. Funny, eh? ::)

Bike ran sweet all time after that until I dropped it in 1997 and stripped it for a major overhaul and tuning, which took 3 years.

I admit this was by far (!!) the biggest improvement I saw with slick50 on any engine I treated it with. Others only improved in shifting or idle went up just some 100 revs or so. But on all engines treated with it, the engine noise went down significantly and the engine reved more freely. It is very much important though that you follow the right procedure: warm the bike up, put it in and then go for a fast round with high revs for at least 20 minutes, better longer. But DON'T do that on new engines! They need to run in first!!

To sum it up: heat went down, revs went up, noise was reduced and shifting improved, all without any negative effect whatsoever.

So - try it or not, that is absolutely up to you. If you have a proper oil-filter installed, I would go for SX6000 as they claim their particles are small enough to pass the filter. I have the washable filter installed which anyway has less restriction, so I don't expect them to end up there (and have never seen kind of "mud" in the filter to proof the theory of the particles end up there).

 
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