check out this link on oil consumption and torque plates as I have found substantial gains in honing with plates as far as power and torque, ring seal and blow by issues.

http://www.chevytalk.org/threads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/1227305/an/0/page/0#1227305

Carl dont all perf. shops hone with plate, I wouldnt want mine done any other way.

How do they do it at the factory?

Carl dont all perf. shops hone with plate, I wouldnt want mine done any other way.

I consider our shop a performance machine shop and every performance engine or performance block that goes through our shops is plate honed or we don't do it.

How do they do it at the factory?

Eric do you mean GM factory and Ford factory ETC if so they are building stock engines and we don't deal with the stock engine market at all.

The performance engines built for the GM peformace division by the outside shops I believe are plate honed as I know the performance engines that are built by ROUSH racing in Lovonia Mich. are all plate honed.

As I believe there is a right way to do things and a half a$$ way.

Some 44 years ago when we first started we had a "deck-mounted" boring bar, a "Sunnen" hand hone and not a "torque plate" in the neighborhood, and we never had an oil consumption issue, ever. We never had a dyno either, but we were involved heavily in "record-holding" cars in our area. Having said that, today EVERY block gets "block-plated". We do a number of blocks today that I don't even believe "block-plates" are made to accomodate. We still use "grade 8 bolts" and washers to duplicate the torque on these at least on the threads. I've just finished 2 nailhead Buicks with this method and a 409 Chev, for which I've never laid eyes on a plate. Again, no problem with the "bolt" method. So, plate or no plate, years ago it didn't amount to much. We do a tremendous amount of testing in the dyno room, we actually have one person almost confined there. We stand by what we know and what we still learn every day. All this enabled us today, to still have the "Highest HP SBC N/A Pump-Gas Engine In The Country". Thanks, Gary in N.Y.
PS Years ago more than 1/2 the G.M. blocks got through the foundry without a "plate" and thousands of BB hi-po's got out with cams "broken-in" that were never "fired" with dual springs in place and never a "flattened" cam. Some people say they get 2% leakage with a block plate and 20% leakage without, I really doubt it!!!! What kind of "leakage" do you get with a Keith Black piston and ring ends at .030" minimum on a 4.000" bore? You block plate that combo and set the rings there and I'll use a bone stock old cast piston w/o a plate and Speed-Pro rings at .016" and we'll see about leakage.

I agree TQ plates are without a doubt the best way, if not the only way, to do a performance engine and less in a perf engine would be as you say "half-assed."

BUt I bring this up because I find the problem described in the link at chevytalk you privided kind of odd . . . he described buldges in the cylinder wall from head bolt distortion which in turn lifted the rings and caused a severe oil burning problem.

I was thinking that if the factories (ie: GM, Ford, etc) have been doing them without TQ plates on Mom's grocery-getter engines for decades how come they don't have buldges and oil burning problems ??? Doesn't seem to me that the problem described at Chevytalk has anything to do with the engines power or performance level -- that's why I draw the comparison between the OEMs and his high perf 406.

. . . and again I am assuming that the OEMs did not use a TQ plate, but do not know for sure -- that's why I asked.

. Some people say they get 2% leakage with a block plate and 20% leakage without, I really doubt it!!!! What kind of "leakage" do you get with a Keith Black piston and ring ends at .030" minimum on a 4.000" bore? You block plate that combo and set the rings there and I'll use a bone stock old cast piston w/o a plate and Speed-Pro rings at .016" and we'll see about leakage.

We have never used Keith Black pistons in ANY ENGINES we have built as are shop is at a differnent performance level then your shop and we don't use cast pistons in anything either.

Gary check out this link
http://www.chevelles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92975

BUt I bring this up because I find the problem described in the link at chevytalk you privided kind of odd . . . he described buldges in the cylinder wall from head bolt distortion which in turn lifted the rings and caused a severe oil burning problem.

Eric68

I had an email about the rings being LIFTED and I have reread that post again from chevy talkand there is nothing about the rings being lifted in any of those post.

The only thing mentioned was this about a quote from a book he had read.

I think I have found the exact reason my 400 uses so much oil: For those that have already have the book, it is on page 81, last paragraph. The book I'm referring to is Mike Mueller's 2005 book, "Chevy Small-Block V-8, 50 years of High Performance." -the partial quote is:"...some bolts remaining perilously close to cylinder walls. Torquing down those bolts actually warped nearby walls, resulting in excessive (and incurable) oil consumption as the piston rings lost contact with those slight bulges during their travel up and down the cylinders."

Carl,

Yeah, this is the part I was talking about "the piston rings lost contact with those slight bulges during their travel up and down the cylinders".

After re-reading this part it sounds like the buldges he is talking about are outward (like dents) rather than what originally sounded like a raised spot in the bore -- I had assumed that the buldges were lifting the rings . . . I see what he is saying now.

But my question remains . . . why would the factory not have issues with this with ordinary production engines and this guy would have problems with his hi-po setup?

It just seems to me there is more to the story -- like we are missing something, like the cylinders were thin or the head bolts were torqued beyond what the factory ones were, etc or maybe this is an anomoly with just the 400 SBC . . . Something else seems amiss here besides the lack of a TQ plate hone job . . . I don't know, just looking to learn something here.