Paul,
You have said many times that det gun coating should work on aluminium
end housings but that it is too expensive, could you expand on too expensive.
How much per housing and how many to get price breaks, any idea.

John

There are two situations here. Insulation and wear surface.
Insulation is too thin to do any good. There is zero evidence
that it functions as insulation despite the thermal barrier coating
name.

The wear surface is another matter.
If you don't copy the Mazda steel liner and chrome you need a wear surface
on bare aluminum. IMHO the real problem is the low modulus of elasticity of
aluminum. IMHO it flexes under the coating and the apex seal. That leads
to a failure of the bond. That is why Mazda choose a high modulus steel liner
mechanically locked to the underlying aluminum.

So yes the wear surfaces in the Le Mans engine are cermets but HOW they are
applied is extremely important and the only proven reliable method is det
gun coating. That mechanically locks the cermet to the aluminum surface.
The method Mazda used on the Le Mans engine. My guess it is over
$1000 per housing. For the real story of what Mazda did and how they did it
read the entire tech paper.

 http://www.rotaryeng.net/Mazda_R26B_US.pdf


Paul Lamar


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