I am a FIRM believer in honing plates (as BHJ calls them) when boring and then honing the block of any engine be it race or grocery getter.
$413 is the price I am paying for mine. It will be cast iron for the same type heads. May get an aluminum at a later date when I build the Gremlin engine with the aluminum heads. And yes an AMC plate will have to be used on an AMC block.
Ring seal is very important and not using a honing plate leaves room for distortion when the heads are torqued onto an engine. As for the hot liquid treatment when honing, that works as well but it isn't as important as using plates IMHO. The honing plates have a greater effect.
The machine shop I'm using (Grimes Auto Machine) located in the metro Atlanta area told me yesterday that they have always had the Plates. I know Atlanta is to far from Pa., but isn't Herman Lewis's shop in West Virginia?
Why did I order a honing plate you 're thinking? Well, when I started looking for a shop to do my machining, I asked several if they had one but the answer was always no. Grimes does a lot of performance machinning so I chose a shop with lots of experience in that area. We to the point of boring the block and I told them to hold off till I could get them the plate, thats when they said they had one already 🙁:
Thanx for the info on clearences Swamprat :t:
