Ceramc coating and thin film lubricant
 

I can't see where this has been covered before. Anyhow, I just sent in my heads, pistons, valves and bearings to be coated. I'm getting two kinds of ceramic coatings. One is a thermal barrier coat, applied to the piston top and the combustion chamber and valve faces. This helps keep heat inside of the engine. If the heat is absorbed into the metal at this point the energy is lost.

The second kind of coating is a thin film lubricant on the bearings and piston skirts as well as the valve stems. I could have done some more items, but I thought this was enough for now. The idea is that I'll not only have more lubrication for engine protection and longevity, but I'll have tighter tolerances, allowing me to use a thinner oil grade. I'll post back on my progress.

Sounds good. When my I saw my Metro's engine was low on compression I started looking into these things. They're not too bad and you can even DIY with the right tools.

Post some links please. I'm interested in doing this in the future.

I'm as skeptical of snake oil cans as the next guy, and I'm sure it's not as effective as an engine tear down and proper coating, but as a mid life freshen up, Liqui-Moly sell this:

LIQUI MOLY - Motor Oils, Additives, Car Care - Cera Tec - ceramic-based premium oil additive for extreme high loads

It's OEM approved and independently tested, and I've been curious to try it out for a while. I'm thinking of trying it on the Prius and Jeep (UFI already has coated cylinder bores).

An interesting test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-7K86w0-_k

I'd just run ws2. Checkout lowerfriction and if you google you can find 'how to' instructions on applying it. If you google yeti and ws2 you'll see someone else who really loves it too. I run it in everything except my automatic transmissions. Works awesomely on bicycles too (roller chains and bearings).

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) does work wonders at lowering friction. Great stuff for things like CV joints. But it also breaks down at engine temperatures and ends up eating away the iron making iron sulfide. I'd imagine that WS2 would do the same.

The coatings I'm getting are Teflon based, or at least that's what I understand. Check out Swain Tech, for an example.

Have you ever recorded your warmup time (idling the engine)? If the piston/head coating works, you should be able to notice an increase in warmup time.

I'm sure it's a step up from Slick 50 :turtle:

Yeah, that or a Prolong demo.

Sadly no. This car doesn't have any sort of temperature gauge. Well, now that I'm rebuilding the engine I'll install an oil temperature and a cylinder head temperature gauges. So I won't be able to compare. All I'll have to go by is that the normal operating temperature should be between 300° F and 350° F CHT. So if it's lower that would be a sign the thermal barrier ceramic coating is working.

As far as the thin film lubricating coating goes, I'm skeptical that it really helps too. But I though, why not. :D