AUS-E55

Does anyone 100% know if our blocks are Alusil or have a nikasil coating ?? Honing a Alusil takes a special honing process usually run on a sunnen CK 10 honing machine but the use a special honing fluid that has etching properties to take away some of the aluminium on the surface and lets the silicone stand proud if you will, My old P-car had a Alusil Block so I researched the hell out of it before i had my block honed thankfully there was a shop that did it the "right" way here in houston,

Jakpro1

Here is an article I found on the M113.

http://www.marcusfitzhugh.com/CLK/DIY/rebuildable.html

To Nikasil coat a sleeve, an aluminum sleeve is dipped in an electrolytic bath of nickel, silicon and other metals for about an hour. The electrolytic reaction causes a silicon-nickle coating to adhere to the aluminum surfaces. When finished, the aluminum sleeve has a Nikasil coating. This makes it pretty obvious that M112/M113 sleeves are not Nikasil. The Mercedes-Benz press release said the sleeves were 'silicon aluminum'. It didn't state that they were nickel and silicon coated aluminum.



Mahle is the supplier of Mercedes-Benz sleeves. It's well known that Mahle produces Alusil sleeves. Alusil is a high-silicon content aluminum alloy and has been in use for almost 100 years. To make an Alusil sleeve, a high-silicon content aluminum alloy sleeve is dipped in an acidic bath. The acidic bath etches away the aluminum on the outer surface, exposing a very hard, very long-wearing, silicon surface. The finished product is still a silicon aluminum alloy.

splinter

Jakpro1 and MarcusF are correct.

http://www.electrosil.com.au/KS.pdf

Ghostrider

That because Jakpro1 and MarcusF are AWESOME!!!

And yes, they are correct.

AUS-E55

I don't think that these blocks are sleeved if you take a look at a few of the pics on my attachments to can see that they're a metal matrix of aluminium and silicon, with the aluminium molecules etched away from the silicone molecules, leaving them standing slightly proud so taking this into consideration aren't the guys that have and are planning to hone the blocks at home going to screw up the blocks ??? Just trying to help out here so don't flame me !! LOL

I believe that this is who manufacture the block on the M113 and Porsche V8's, Here some links

http://www.kspg-ag.de/pdfdoc/kspg_pr...rsche_V8_e.pdf

http://www.kspg-ag.de/index.php?fid=105&lang=3

Jakpro1

Almost 100% sure it's sleeved, but like it says in my article I posted....the block is cast AROUND the sleeve in that the sleeve actually melts to the block. A one time use trick for sure....such is life in a benz.

Hope Brooke chimes in (Exotic-metal55). He has more knowledge on this than most of us. One of the few guys running different pistons in the beast.

Jakpro1

Okay so now I am confused. Brooke was talking in this thread about sleeving the block so I am really not sure if they are or are not now.

Lemme PM him and see if he can come on and fill us in .

chawkins2001

Exotic-mental knows for sure. This topic has been discussed in depth when he replaced his pistons with JE's I believe.

Tech-Tune

Alusil.

PTE

They are sleeved , as Jim indicated. They are precision placed and have some sort of coating on the OD of the sleeve , then hi pressure casing / pour. Takes place. The top .060 material is very hard & that is where the silicone crystals work there way to the surface. There is a special paste used with the honing process. Not the normal honing oil. We have resleeved several M-113 K blocks to a hi nodular Iron sleeves and matched the ring packet to work with the Iron sleeve. You can get 1/4 mm / .25 mm -- .010ths over sized pistons. That is what I Know.
Cheers _PTEngineering

Exotic-metal55

Sorry for the slow reply but was out of town for a while. I agree, our blocks have a sleeve as Patrick/Jim mentioned but not the press in type sleeve that many may imagine. It seems to be cast into the block but I do not have the detials on that. My older threads about re-sleeving had to do with machining out the midddle of the block and dropping in a Siamese style steel sleeve kit from Darton. We do have an alumisil coating but my piston walls were bored out and then re-coated with Nickasil to stock bore specs.

This is a nickle carbide style coating and very, very hard! After a lot of re-search, I prefer this coating over a alusil. I think AMG is now using some version of Nickasil, BMW and the Zr1 vette too. I had to use steel rings with the nickasil coating and alusil uses a different ring material.