Manufacturing a cylinder liner for my Honda 350 Four
When I got round to stripping the spare engine, one bore in the barrel was badly marked; it would have probably taken a re-bore to max. oversize, but I wanted to salvage as much of this engine as possible. I emailed David Silver to find, not surprisingly, that liners are no longer available. I decided to put my manufacturing skills to the test and make one myself. I contacted Merseymetals for a piece of 'Meehanite' cast iron and unable to buy cored bar (tube), I had to settle for a solid piece. This would just mean a little extra work with the boring bar on the lathe.
The operation sequence was as follows:
Mount in 4 jaw chuck
Face end and rough turn some of the O/D waste to plus 1mm dia.
Centre drill/drill to largest available drill (1" in my case)
Bore to finished size of un-worn section of original liner.
Turn around, face to length and again remove excess stock from O/D
Remove from chuck
Turn stub mandrel in 4 Jaw to push fit inside new bore and keep in chuck.
Mount liner on stub mandrel with large revolving centre at tailstock end.( Check parallelism before this op.)
Finish turn O/D to size.
Heat cylinder barrel in oven when Wife away at shops, liner overnight in freezer.
Drop liner into barrel and allow to cool, whilst removing oil-smoke from Kitchen before imminent return.