Align Honing 

Hi Joe. Thanks for your question and sorry for the delayed response. You are correct in your concern about gravity working against the precision of the process. The countermeasure is to have a very rigid mandrel that will not sag within the required level of precision. The Sunnen align hone has been the industry standard for many decades and performs very well in the right hands. Dart Machinery will obviously process far more blocks than any engine builder. They have a vertical CNC hone. Dart’s volume allows them to justify the machine’s extreme cost based on its very high speed/short cycle time. Precision is an added benefit. A skilled machinist can achieve the same level of precision but Dart’s will do it consistently in a small fraction of the time required on a manual machine. Here is a link to a video showing Dart’s vertical home in operation: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-h6ygefnz-lE.html

@@borowskirace thanks

Yes we do.

Thanks for the question. The answer is that it depends. You can cut the caps and shrink the vertical distance between the cap and the bottom of the main saddle. However, the lateral distance is still as wide as it was making the hole oval shaped. Depending on the application and the bearings, a little distortion is tolerable. The bigger problem is if you start taking to much material out of the block while chasing the problem causing other issues like changing the crank to cam distance and causing fitment problems with side bolted caps like the OE LS blocks.

There are some King bearings that can help with that as well. Of course its all depending on several variables like how big is too big. As stated there is a point of no return.