JB Racing Steel lined cylinders

[WERK I]

This has been moved from the post remote oil filter. Couple of questions to DonE or anyone else using these cylinders.

These JB Racing cylinders have steel lined innners. Do you use a head gasket with these? I'm wondering about aluminum heads mating with steel and the ramifications.
Also, are these the Mahle cylinders that have been bored out to accept steel liners or are these aluminum castings of another source?

If these are an attractive alternative to Nikkies or Mahle's, I would gladly use them since tearing down the engine every 3 years(20K miles) for inspection is fine with me.

[DonE]

Good idea on moving the thread.

Nathan - I don't know if the cylinders are heavier than stock, but I would imagine so since they're steel with thicker walls.

As for the mating of the steel cylinders and AL heads, I haven't had a problem. Keep in mind that I have a stainless fire ring as well. I use stock copper shims that have been opened up (again, larger barrels) by JB racing as part of their kit. If you give them all the measurements, they'll get you the proper shims.

JB uses a proprietary process to fit their CNC aluminum cooling fins to the steel cylinders. I've been to their shop a half-dozen times and they won't show me how its done.

If you're interested, I recommend that you speak to the Porsche specialist at JE Piston about how they work with JB to design pistons to work with these cylinders. The JE Porsche specialist uses the cylinders in his track car. I would also talk to Jim Higgs, owner of JB. See how he presents the cylinders to you and see if it makes sense.

You might want to consider one more call - to LN Engineering. Even though they are competitors (Nikkies vs steel), these are two class operations and will give you good pro's and con's to their products. When comparing the two, I decided on JB because of cost and they did all my other machine work. Otherwise, they are two great products in their own rights.

Good luck.

[turbobrat930]

Dave, they are heavier.... But they are not recipicating mass, so not too big of a deal. They are VERY high quality and obviously the walls are quite a bit thicker than the factory cyl's. I like the ring selection that is available to you when you use the steel cyl's instead of the Al.... and i feel that they will maintain roundness better under heavy boost/ and lots of miles... The Al fins are a CNC product, and are not cast. They do have a propriatary process to mate the two piecies together....

[strokher racing]

I have the Nickies on my engine. They are top notch in construction.

[DonE]

Eric - Is it running yet?

[strokher racing]

Yes sir it is. Many changes and improvments that should make the car shine

[DonE]

Do you have any pics posted? I'd like to see how it turned out after all these years.

[strokher racing]

No good pictures yet, but I will post some soon. Made several changes that make this car quite simply Overkill Went away from the single 46mm wastegate, and have twin 44's now.