"Home-Brewed" Cerakote Ceramic Piston Top Coat and Cerakote Micro Slick Skirt coatings

["Dart67"]

I am doing a rebuild on my 440/512.

I decided to try the Cerakote Ceramic Piston Top Coat and Cerakote Micro Slick Skirt coating products on my pistons.

These coatings are available as an Air Cure or Oven Cure. I chose to use the air cure as I was not in a great hurry to get the engine finished.
From talking with Cerakote tech support, the only appreciable difference between the air and oven cure is the cure time. The air cure will "flash" cure in about an hour and reach full cure in 5 days. The oven cure is ready to use once sprayed, oven cured, and cooled down.

I use Cerakote C-186 Piston Coat for the piston tops and C-110 Micro Slick for the skirts.

The preparation is very time consuming...

Tops Coated and ready for masking for skirt coating.

Masked for skirt coating.

I used a piece of 3/4" PVC pipe to run through the pin holes with the pistons face down. Then very carefully screwed a 1 1/2" drywall screw through the PVC pipe until it Just touched the underside of the piston top. This was done to keep the pistons from turning on the pipe and keep them separated while spraying.

Finished.... Almost ready to install..

 

[RustyRatRod]

Well, if looks mean anything, they're good to go. So, I would assume if this is used on the skirts, then you would need to coat the pistons before final block honing, right? Some of these coatings are pretty much alien technology like space shuttle stuff.

 

["Dart67"]

Well, if looks mean anything, they're good to go. So, I would assume if this is used on the skirts, then you would need to coat the pistons before final block honing, right? Some of these coatings are pretty much alien technology like space shuttle stuff.

The coating only adds about 1mil.

 

[HPP]

Very nice job on those. Looks professional.

I did the same on the last tow motor I built for one of my trucks. Also did the thermal application on the combustion chambers and valve faces and dry film on stem ends and rocker arms. Didn't do the bearings. Back then they only had oven cure so I picked up a craigslist unit for $50 and kept it in the garage for coating work.

That engine was a beast. 440 in a 3/4 ton truck would pull like a freight train, get low teens mileage round town and high teens on the highway pulling a trailer with a car at 5000' elevation. Probably didn't hurt that I also spent a lot of time dialing in the ignition curve and carb calibration.

 

["Dart67"]

Very nice job on those. Looks professional.

Thank You... I spent a great deal of time on the cleaning and preparation.

I have also did the Cerakote on my TTI headers.

 

[Mtrhead]

They look like you bought them like that...Amazing work

 

[TT5.9mag]

very nice job. Your attention to detail shows in the final product. Can you please point me to or drop a link to any of cerakote’s documentation for what each of their coatings do.

 

["Dart67"]

very nice job. Your attention to detail shows in the final product. Can you please point me to or drop a link to any of cerakote’s documentation for what each of their coatings do.

https://www.cerakote.com/shop/cerakote-coating/C-186/piston-coat-air-cure

C-110 MICRO SLICK DRY FILM LUBRICANT COATING (AIR CURE) | Cerakote Ceramic Coatings

www.cerakote.com

 

[Oldmanmopar]

We have a guy that does all our pistons oven cure. It is not cheap but is time consuming. We just got the hemi pistons back . Pistons tops are silver. I don't know why . I'll have to ask Steve