Kevin wrote: > I think the advantage of Nikasil cylinders is they are cheap. Not for Corvairs/VWs it seems, but in model airplane engines it is the cheapest engine you can buy. They are often considered throw away engines. Nikasil cylinders can't be bored so they are a lot like Chromed aluminum cylinders.
Nikasil isn't a material, it's a coating that's often applied to aluminum cylinders to improve wear resistance. Porsche Nikasiled just about every one of its cylinders at one time, and I don't think they did it because it's cheap! They did it so they could use lightweight aluminum cylinders that still have good longevity in the place of cast iron cylinders. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikasil for details. The article mentions that it fell from favor due to problems associated with high sulfur fuels, but 100LL probably doesn't have that problem. It's also somewhat tricky to apply. I'm working on a UAV engine project in which the folks that are building the engine insist that there's only one place in the world that knows how to Nikosil plate correctly. Applied incorrectly it has been known to flake off and cause real problems... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
