Hone Your Cylinders
By Benjamen Johnson
This cylinder hone from KD Tools lets you hone and remove glaze from your engine’s cylinder walls. It works on cylinders from 2″ to 7″ in diameter. You can adjust the tension to control how fast the medium 240-grit stones cut, and you can dial in the diameter with the spread limiter. Prices for the hone start from $20.
I’ll be the first to admit that rebuilding engines is not in my area of expertise, so does anyone have any experience with cylinder honers like this? I’m assuming you can’t just chuck this into your cordless drill, but would need some sort of stable platform such as a drill press or other boring machine. If you’ve worked with a tool like this, let us know in comments.
Cylinder Hone [KD Tools]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
April 8th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I believe with honing you can get away with using a power drill and a steady hand. Boring out a cylinder you’ll need a press.
That’s my understanding though from a passing conversation years ago with my friend’s father who used to build engines.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Blind is correct. This is for honing and a fast drill is fine. The spring tension on each of the three legs will keep them uniformly pressed against the wall. I’ve used one many times on both harley v-twins and big block chevy v-8s.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Agreed. I’ve used a smaller version on brake calipers to clean out the garbage and glaze. With engines, I figure if you’re already knee deep in the block, might as well get it bored.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I’ve used the Flexhone several times, super easy to work with, just need a cordless drill and use motor oil as the lube/cutting fluid. I’ve always ended up with a great cross hatch pattern when done and fixed the issue at hand (ring jobs to resolve oil consumption issue).
April 8th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
This home would be fine to break glaze or find scalloping in the cylinder. However, a ball type hone will be the better choice to finish the cylinder with a 50-60 degree crosshatch pattern.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:05 am
A bottle brush style hone will generally provide better results, especially for a first-timer.
A handheld drill is fine for this type of work.
Boring or resleeving a block means replacing the pistons as well, which adds significant cost.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Used this type several times on motorcycle engine cylinders. I like the type with replacable hones so you can switch grits.
With the cylinder mounted horizontally in a vise you can easily use this with a hand-held drill. I like to have an assistant with a spray bottle of cutting fluid standing on the opposite side to apply fluid without having to stop the drill.
These things usually come packaged with a wide rubber band to go around them for storage (so they’ll fit in a tool drawer without being all splayed out). However I’ve found these bands break in a busy tool drawer, so I use a short chunk of 2″ pipe instead. I suppose over time, leaving it compressed could make the springs weaker, but I haven’t noticed any problems thus far.
–TMIB
October 14th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
[...] one in is a ball hone… they are good. hard to tell the lower image but here wat i use… Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Hone Your Cylinders if i was to buy another one it would be a ball hone but they are expensive… basically all your [...]
February 13th, 2010 at 7:08 am
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