piston coatings

i was wondering if anyone uses these coatings that dart or swain offer. im looking to have my skirts coated and the guy from dart swears that i need to coat the domes as well . i heard that the top of the domes dont last at all but they are telling me the only way it comes off is from detnation. top fuel and funny cars run their coatings so im told! this would be going ina supercharged alchol promod running 20% over. thanks jay

 

Coatings

No in no way coat the tops on a alky motor. PM me if you would like to Don

 

Contact Carl Benton at PolyDyn, he coats Nitro pistons for me, used to do Alky pistons for me, also blower pulleys,bearings, headers, valve springs ect.
Ricky
888-765-9396
www.polydyn.com

 

Ditto the above post...Polydyn does good work and can guide you in the right direction. I've dealt with them for around 20 years. Always satisfied.
Ro

 

Ive mentioned this before also, the coating Ross puts on is worth its weight in GOLD! And very reasonable cost. Won't run without it anymore!

 

Carl Benton - owner and head honcho at PolyDyn - is the godfather of coatings. His are the best I have ever found, and at resonalble prices.
I coat every one of my big dog alcohol engines with the tops of the pistons. I have seen the skirts of the pistons wear off quickly with alcohol, but not tops. I actually followed Carl's advice and run the oil shedding ont he skirts for alcohol. It works better than the standard skirts for my application.
But, back to the piston tops, I run the b-geezuz out of them and they are always on and unharmed when I pull the thing apart. Unless I try and melt the pistons, then sometimes it will come off just at the edges of the new hole in the piston. But everywhere outside of 1/2 inch from the hole the coating is just fine. In fact, if you write in sharpie marker on the flat side of the dome in the coatings, you can still read it after a year of abuse. (Or so I have heard )
I do run a bit of a different application than most, so maybe Don is right in a more traditional application. I dunno.

 

Almost 20 years ago (god has it been that long?) , back when I use to play with the "N" word. I had a set of pistons thermal barrier coated on the tops by Swain tech. From what I was told the thermal coating that they put on pistons is the same coating that Swain puts on the space shuttle tiles.
I can tell you this... that engine I built with those pistons was a 10 second pump gas, daily driven street/strip .020 over 350 chevy with a 250 hp plate system in a 3500lb car. My younger brother and I pumped a countless amount of nitrous bottles thru that engine in two years. When we tore that engine down two years later, the pistons looked like the day I first installed them. The O.D., ring lands and wristpin bores all measured zero wear.

I know that engine may be apples to oranges, compared to a 2500 hp blown alcohol engine but...it still shows a good example that the coatings do work.

 

coatings

Need you to think what the caricaturists of alcohol are + then think of what the coating does. Don

 

Don , fill us in please !

 

don , from what i think your trying to say is that alcohol is very harsh on any surface it comes in contact with . meaning that if you were to coat pistons and did miss a little on the tune up that maybe the coating could chip or fail and start falling off. causing a detnating affect that would probally lead to a failure . if im understanding what your saying . jay

 

Call terry vince at or Carl at ERD they have done some work in this direction very recently with interesting results that ended up with them not coating their pistons,

 

Which coating did they opt out of?
Tops? Skirts? Underside? Ring Lands? Hard anodize? All?