Cure for glazed cylinder?

[bschwartz]

I was recently reading a post (somewhere) about running an engine without enough load, that caused cylinder glazing.  The question was how to fix it without tearing the engine apart.  Someone suggested bon-ami cleaning powder.

I was also reading about WMO causing problems with wear from Spencer's ash.......

Small cracking happened in the grey matter....

I wonder if running some WMO in an engine with cylinder glazing would help if only run for a short time?

I don't have the problem, just thought I'd throw it out there for your thoughts.

[admin]

that bon ami story make me feel like i have athelete foot on my tongue!
you know fingernails on the blackboard sort of thing!

while i am sure some body used it and it did what is reported, i am equally positive that the long term effects were never reported.

bon ami is an abrasive, and while it might well scrub out the glazing on the cylinder, it will also collect in the ring grooves and wear them
out along with the rings, get past them and down into the oil where accelerated wear to brgs and other hard parts will result.

short answer, i would never do it or advise anyone to try it on any engine they cared about.

the spencer ash story, has its problems too in my opinion.

while there are oils out there that will make ash when burnt, many such have been phased out with the advent of cat converters and O2 sensers, and are certainly nearly gone from diesel oils today.

the only correct method of dealing with a glazed cylinder is to tear it down, hone it and replace the rings.

anything else is going to compromise the rest of the engine, sooner than later in my opinion.

bob g

[LowGear]

As usual; I'm with bob g.

Bon Ami is one of my childhood villains.  My mother had me wash the windows with it.  But back to uppy-downy VS. roundy-roundy.  Rarely do you cure an uppy-downy problem with a uppy-downy remedy.  I'm sure it wouldn't be as bad on your pump, injector and cylinder chamber components as would say - beach sand.

Just so you guys don't forget:  THIS IS THE INTERNET AND THERE ARE JACK-ASSES OUT THERE THAT SPEND ALL OF THEIR READING TIME THINKING UP WAYS TO SCREW OTHER PEOPLES LIVES UP SO THEY WON'T BE SETTING ALONE ON THE TOILET WONDERING WHERE THEY WENT WRONG.

Casey

[cognos]

Makes sense to me that anything abrasive would deglaze the cylinder wall.

Makes sense to me that the action of the piston would "sand" nice parallel grooves in the sides of the cylinder in a direction matching piston travel.

Makes sense to me that this would not give you that nice symmetrical  cross-hatch effect that mechanics seem to desire on cylinder walls, for some reason...

Careful with the ash vs. additive argument... some base oil stocks have an ash residue maximum spec (on distillation testing) even before additives are added. I've never seen a result, though. The stuff isn't meant to be burned... And no, I have no idea if this ash would be abrasive... but it's ash, so...

I just read a couple of MSDS sheets on Mobil 20 DTE Hydraulic oil. They make several "Ashless" Hydraulic oils with the same specs.. What's that about? Why would hydraulic oil, never meant to be burned, have an ash spec? Ya got me. Not my area. Where did I go wrong?

[TimSR2]

I remember of hearing long ago of a used car lot remedy for this,   using mothballs thrown into the combustion chamber. Supposedly one per cylinder worked  to get the rings seating again. Never tried it though... 

[cognos]

Moth balls are para-dichlorobenzene - and when added to the gasoline in your old, clapped out Volkswagon engine in your dune buggy, give you a short period of seriously increased performance followed by a series of bangs, a cloud of smoke, and an oil spill. Ask me how I know!

I don't think they deglazed the cylinders, though.

[Ronmar]

I think I would go with a load bank and water/alcohol injection or propane fumigation before I knowingly introduced a powdered abrasive into the engine...

[Henry W]

I am with bob g,
Any other way and your probably going to waste time and money.

Henry

[vdubnut62]

I have a mechanic friend that reseated the rings in a seriously overheated old Jeep (late 60's/early 70's) V-8 with water/dawn dishwashing liquid drizzled down the carb while running.  I know he drove it for years after that.
Just saying. YMMV

Ron

EDIT:   I'm working on the assumption that the dawn breaks down the cylinder wall oil film.

[cujet]

Mitsubishi came up with an interesting laser etch for cast iron cylinder walls. They use the procedure on small diesel engines. I'll see if I can find a picture of the etch pattern, it's very interesting and quite distinct. The claim was vastly improved cylinder life. Must work, as the pattern is still there at overhaul!

In essence, the goal was to replicate the pitting that rust produces. Those micro pits hold oil and provide a lifetime of cylinder lubrication. After reading the Mitsu study, it was clear that conventional honing is not the ideal cylinder surface as it is easily worn through, and the wear rate increases markedly when this happens.

[TimSR2]

Bschwartz,

The problem may not be cylinder glazing but actually coking in the ring lands from   fuel wash down or/or motor oil blowby ....  A compression and leakdown test would be a good place to start.  Often a good hot run with a  heavy load  on clean diesel will remedy the situation.  A glazed cylinder is not the kiss of death if the rings are free, and seating nicely in the bore.  

I remember old Mack V8's used to slobber fuel out the exhaust manifold to block connection if left idle too much, and would be sluggish for a while afterwards,  until they got  loaded up and worked.  It was understood that if they were low idled they would coke up, so we always had to throttle them up to 1100  or shut them down.

That's probably what people are talking about here, the 'lightly loaded diesel engine' which causes light cylinder ring pressure, cool combustion chamber temperatures, washdown of partly burned fuel, and coking in the ring lands. This would be exacerbated by some "Alternate Fuels" greatly. Again, clean diesel  ( it's a a great solvent cleaner!) high heat, heavy load, then retest compression and leakdown.

If it fails to improve then the usual remedies apply.   Teardown, inspect cylinder for taper, bellmouth , and out of round .  If it is "just a glazing problem" and all the parts are good   (check ring end gap!)  you just ball hone the bore lightly , wash well, clean the ring lands and put the original rings back on and slap it back into service.

If the parts don't check out then it's off to the parts store and the machine shop....

[mike90045]

Would propane fumigation help, reducing the amount of diesel, and letting the cylinder dry up and rings reset ?

[TimSR2]

Propane or ng   fumigation would prevent it from happening in the first place.  But if going to that much trouble why not just use a dry gas spark engine? Spark engines love to be lightly loaded.   Which leads us back to another thread. :-)

I don't think propane would help clear up stuck rings. Diesel fuel is the best solvent I know of for that.  With really badly gummed up gasoline engines I used to squirt diesel fuel down each plug hole once a day for a week, and they were usually cured. I have even put diesel in the gasoline (5 percent) but that's not a really good idea anymore with o2 sensors and catalytic converters.

I'd try rolling the suspect engine over every day for a week or two to keep the rings soaked , then start it up and give it a good hard working run on diesel fuel.  If one can  match the diesel engine to the load so that it can run at 50 to 70 percent load for at least 30 percent of the time, and run at least 10 percent of the time on good clean road diesel, then there should be little trouble.   

[admin]

with all due respect, why go through all the herculean efforts to cure a problem, rather than just take it down
and do it right?

i can understand if it is an engine that must be online continuously, or is very expensive, or there are no parts, or it is
in some horrible access, but...

a listeroid?  really?

how long does it take to remove a head, remove a side cover, disconnect the lower end of the conrod, and pull
the piston out of the hole...

then stuff the lower end with a clean towel, take a bead hone to the cylinder, clean the bore with fresh oil and clean white paper
towels until there is no sign of gray color, clean the piston, and rings if you plan to reuse them, or replace them (replacement is strongly
recommended if available) and put the engine back together.

then break it in right, and put it back to work?

whats that take, a half day?  and you have a clean engine that you know will do the job it was intended to do?

fwiw

once an engine is glazed, it generally is not going to get better with the addition of any substance, stuck rings being another matter entirely.
adding load to try and get it to deglaze itself isn't likely going to do any good, and if it does you had best go buy a lottery ticket quick!  the odds are probably higher winning the lottery than getting a glazed engine to run like it should.

bob g

[Tom Reed]

Uh, Bob, Listeroids have a removable cylinder. The con rod does not even need to be pulled. The job is doable in about 1 hour. Or for that matter just pop in a new liner and be done with it.