Got Less than 200 Hours out of ECI's Cermichrome Cylinders

Now they're off for honing and new rings because three of them were pumping
oil into the combustion chambers. Or maybe they're just expensive junk.

Yesterday I called ECI in San Antonio. I got to talk to someone in the
shop and he said they had HAD some instructions about how to hone the
cylinder walls to break the glaze with canoe-shaped 100-grit emery cloth
glued to the honing stones, but he didn't recall where to find the
instructions.

I asked if I couldn't revive the cylinders with honing and a new set of
rings, and he said to make sure to use ECI's cast-iron rings because they
had more graphite in them and would mate to the cermichrome when other rings
would not. "Which engine do you have?" he asked.

"It's an A-65-8 Continental."

"Oh, we don't make rings for those cylinders," he said. "Maybe you can get
them from Fresno."

If you're not familiar with the cermichrome process, ECI marketed them very
aggressively as something of a miracle. But they turned out to be trouble.
Most people -- especially with the bigger, hotter engines--- got a hundred
hours or so out of them before the silicon carbide wore away, leaving
chromium underneath, which did not lubricate like channel chrome. So they
began sucking oil.

Whether these are sucking oil for that reason is another question.