Abradable Piston Coatings

Last year during tear down when I was inspecting the pistons, I noticed a bit of piston rock had been going on. Not terrible, but just enough to scuff up the top of the piston near the top ring – more than I’d like. The piston skirts didn’t get knocked in, no excessive cylinder clearance – just big piston and a short skirt I guess.

After talking with Mike at Diamond, he recommended we try Line2Line Coatings – they offer a new Abradable Piston Coating that is applied to the skirts. Unlike regular piston skirt coatings, this is a thick coating designed to wear in during use helping reduce piston rock, reduce friction and maybe make a bit more power.

There are some videos on their web site that help explain the process if you’re interested. We’ll take a look at these pistons after next tear down and see how they fared. 6 of the pistons are used, 2 are brand new so I can get an idea if the coating actually made much difference in piston rock after it has broken in.

Read the follow up post after we tried the coating the first season.