ceramic coatings
 

I am interested in getting several of my engine pieces ceramic coated, but i have found many places on the internet that offer these coatings and I dont know which company to trust. Does anyone have a company they have had good experience with?

You want to look locally and find out who does the best work at the best price. Shipping costs will eat you up otherwise. Surely in Pa. you have some within 50 miles.

Or do it yourself. :)

...and how do i do that?

Does a kit exist where you can apply the ceramic material yourself and bake it in the oven?

The parts need to be baked at 300F to 400F for 30 minutes or so. So, with a decent kitchen oven, you should easily be able to get the temperature. I'm not sure how great the regulation would be in home appliances, but it's probably enough for small parts.

techline has some products for home baking, like thermal coatings for internal engine parts.

J

Investigate Isotropic finishing as another alternative, depending upon the components you are looking at doing. We find it heaps better than an actual coating. But of course ont he housings go for the ceramic.

We do this for the Guru race engines for the e-shaft and all gear compoents (diff / transmission etc).

In the US I think "Taylors" in Texas does it and I am sure other places as well.

what do you guys think about techline's coatings? they sell bottles that you put on yourself and bake in an oven.....do these coatings work good?

Can you please explain what isotropic finishing is? I live in Sweden so there's a possibility some swedish company can do this. Plan on treatening my gearbox and ring and pinion.

It should be the same stuff the pros use. I would imagine that it's all in the prep work, much like painting. If you get the parts SQUEAKY clean and follow the directions to the letter (this aslo applies to surface finish) you should get good results. Also, I'd be leery using the same oven you cook food in, especially indoors. Dont wanna kill yourself, pets, family etc. Pick up a used junky oven to do this, and do it out side.

ok, i will probably end up using the techline stuff then, because then I dont have to have the hassel of shipping and it would be fun to do myself :) . im coating the rotor housings, rotor faces, side plates, intake port runners, exhaust port sleeves, and intake manifold. I will probably use techlines toughest thermal barrier coating. since the combustion chamber is completely coated, I should notice a pretty good power boost, shouldnt I? i have heard of people coating just rotor faces or just housings, etc; but havent heard of someone coating everything.

edit: assuming the same level of coating is performed, i think a rotary would get a higher power boost than a piston engine, because the hotter combustion temps would burn alot of that unused fuel that is normally wasted due to the long combustion chamber.

edit2: when i coat teh rotor faces, would it be possible for me to use the coating to fill in the recesses a little to boost compression ratio? if i do one normal coating and then do repeated coatings just in the recess, would the layers hold together?

AFAIK, Its not designed to be a thick layer. You are asking for trouble unless the mfg says its ok to do that. You could only coat the rotor faces, cant coat the rotor or side housings, so the "whole combustion chamber" will not really be coated.

why cant you coat the rotor or side housings?

if u coat the inside of the engine it will prevent heat transfer and it can retain alot of the heat and start warping everything thats my theory. But then u dont have to upgrade ur cooling system because there wont be enough heat transfer to need it JJ.

Because the thermal barrier coating is not supposed to be on any wear or sliding surfaces. It'll just come off and wreck your engine. Just like a boinger, they only do the piston domes on those. Well they do the combustion chamber on the head too, but thats cause theres no moving parts sliding over it, unlike our motors.

for the rotor and side housings, what if i first put on the thermal barrier coating and then coated overtop of that with a layer of techlines high temp/pressure lubricant?

No good, the thermal barrier wont hold up to any mechanical contact.

yes, but the lubricant is a bake on coating which would go overtop of the TB coating, so the seals are in contact with teh lubricant coating, not the TB.

Yea but your missing the point. The lubricant is attached to the TB coating (like paint on primer). The TB is attached to the housing. One good swipe by the seal will scrape it off like a putty knife. The TB isnnt designed to take ANY mechanical loads applied to it.

so even tho the seal isnt in direct contact, the pressure will seperate the lubricant and TB together from the housing surface? wouldnt it be cool if someone made housings with a TB layer imbedded in the metal right behind the inner surface of the rotor or side housing? mazda shouldve done that to the renesis, they couldve couldve gotten some more ponies :)

hey check this out
http://thermalspray.com/plasma.htm

do you think that type of thermal barrier would work on the housings?

You could impregnate the internals with a dry film coating. This won't ware off nearly as fast since it actually goes into the metal.

Bringing this back from the dead for a reason. Did some looking into the isotropic treatment. Looks like a fantastic technology. Heres a site with an overview of what it is, and what it does. And GURU apparently does use this process to great effect.

http://www.taylor-race.com/isotropic.cfm

The 7, I'm just curious how you got the rotor in your sig so clean, did you sand it??

Theres a rotor cleaning thread on here somewhere.