Piston Coatings, just had mine done.

[TheBoz]

John at Costa Mesa R&D is putting my motor together, in the process he told me about these coatings. So I had him do it to my Ross 8.3:1 Pistons. He told me that this will help to protect the pistons from Knock and let me run more boost. Anyone else have any good info?

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[DougR]

He is 100% correct!

 

[fwdmaster]

Nice, how much was this process

 

[tkelly27]

Detonation or not, I'd get them done on my engine just so I'd know they were looking good for when they meet the valves. Make a good impression, you know. Those are really cool looking!

What kind of coatings? Ceramic is supposed to not get as hot. Any possibility of a before or after?

 

[Defiant]

Piston coating came on in the sixties when plasma coating was pefected, but I don't hear much about it anymore and I don't know why. We always just painted ours because that's what we could afford. I doubt it lasted ten minutes, but it never seemed to hurt anything.
What's it cost to have that done? What's the method?

 

[TheBoz]

It was about 60 bucks a piston. This included the skirts and the cermaic tops. I will ask how they did them, but I am guessing that it is the same way you get a header coated. The pistons before were just brand new Ross pistons, with no coating on them at all. They now have the teflon side skirts and the ceramic tops.

 

[Defiant]

Hm. It shouldn't be ceramic, unless a whole lot has changed. If the pistons can hold onto it, you're golden, but I'd not was ceramic flaking off, gouging cylinder walls, impinging turbine blades, and just generally causing bad dreams.

 

[marcmsj]

I'd be interested if I could get more information on this and some solid numbers along with a treated piston that has gone through several miles/passes to see how the coating holds up. Sounds promising but so does a lot of other things on paper. If we're to spend 250 bucks or so on treating a set of pistons, I want to know exactly what I'm paying for.

 

[TunaTalon]

Here's where I looked while researching my stroker project. http://www.hpcoatings.com/default.aspx

I decided not to coat my pistons mostly because my HP goals were modest.

Also any coating that protects the top of the piston from heat will be hotter than the piston without the coating. If the coating protects the piston from detonation, then it is more likely to detonate from the hotter piston top.

The web is full of bench racing on the topic, but I found little hard data.

 

[Rick@AP]

That looks like Swain Tech's gold top coating. Very good stuff if it is.