I have read everything I can find on the net with Nikasil. In the model airplane world anything with a coating on the cylinder is considered cheap. I think mostly because on model airplane engines they do the block and cylinder in one piece then coat the cylinder to get the hardness needed. It is a very cheap way of building an engine (low parts count), but is very lightweight. I still think of the Nikasil cylinder as a throw away part. It isn't shop rebuildable if damaged and new cylinders will have to be bought. I guess that makes it not so cheap. One web site did claim the Nikasil cylinder is 2-3 times stronger than chrome plated cylinders. Bottom line is any cast iron cylinder engine converted to these aluminum cylinders will be lighter weight. I may buy a set of Nikasil cylinders myself.
Kevin. -----Original Message----- From: n5...@hiwaay.net To: kr...@mylist.net Sent: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 3:40 PM Subject: Re: KR> RE: Nikasil... 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 -------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html ________________________________________________________________________ Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
