Honing brake cylinders vs. sleeving

[pfarber]

One rear cylinder off.. one piston lightly stuck, other free.

Cylinder bore looks OK, some pitting on the 'botton' where some water acculumated.

Any CONS against simply honing the cylinder? A new or a sleeved cylinder are gonna be $80+. A hone might be $30.

Saftey is an issue.. but honing brake cyslinders has been a time tested fix.. but is it OK on a 43 CCKW?

Thanks.

[dr deuce]

I have done both.

I would recommend that you reslieve them/it

I have not tried stainless but I would think that that would be
better than brass though I have never tried the stainless ones

[pfarber]

Ok, but why?

I do not have any significant pitting... more hardened debris than anything.

What benifits will $500 worth of sleeved cylinders give me that a $15 hone will not?

[dr deuce]

There is a spec for the GO NO-GO dimension on the bore of the cylinder. If the bore is too big, which you can make it by honing too much, you will try to extrude the cup around the piston under a hard stop/high pressure condition.

Remember that with the rears and banjo fronts, there is nothing to keep the moisture out and that the outer ends of the sheel cylinders tend to rust. After they rust and the shoes wear, the cup starts running over the rusty area and good bye cup! That is on reason I recommend putting WB grease inside the wheel cylinder cups to try to keep the moisture/water out. With brass or stainless, there is nothing to rust.

To me the ideal wheel cylinder would be SS slieve with a brass piston. The brass piston would not corrode like the alu ones tend to do. But no one makes brass pistons. You would have to have them made at a machine shop.

[pfarber]

The manual lists .003 to .006 clearance for the cup to bore.

If you can hone out .006 than you are not honing.... you are boring.

I know that honing is not a cure all... but if you stay in spec then you should be good to go.

Other than rust concerns are there any other issues?

Since I have a cylinder now to play with I will try the hone method..... if it fails then it gets sleeved.

[dr deuce]

ALWAYS use a new return spring. $7.95 from Jim Carter. If it breaks, you will be going nowhere

[jakub]

it may interest you to know that the trucks manufactured in Poland in the 50-ties had almost identical rear wheel cylinders (1 ½ inch), since I had all cylinders shot and couldn’t get new one I was considered resleeving but found different solution instead, all these cylinders need to fit is to machine small thread conversion from metric to UNF thread for pipe connection and slight reboring holes in wheel plate because they are mounted with bigger size bolts, apart from that they are identical.

BTW those trucks are called STAR (name deviates from town of Starachowice not star the Star), few pictures here http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_(motoryzacja)