MAF Suriname Cylinder overhaul

Ryan has been working through the process of overhauling the Suriname engines cylinders.  We start by cleaning and inspecting the cylinders.  Some of the inspections are visual, looking for corrosion, cracks and excessive wear the remaining inspections are dimensional.  We measure to .0001" or 1/10,000 of an inch with most of limits.  We check for excessive wear, out of roundness and clearances between parts.  Any inspection that shows a discrepancy has to be fixed before the cylinders can be reused.

 Valve guides are a common part of the cylinders that need to be replaced at the cylinder overhaul but before the guides can be installed they have to be reamed to the correct size (above).  The cylinder is heated up in an oven and the old guide is removed and the new guide installed in its place.

 With new guides in, the valve and the  valve seat has to be checked, corrected and lapped in to assure the valve seals during operation.  The remaining parts: springs, keepers, caps, studs, threaded holes, barrel, rings, shafts, rockers and push rods all go through a similar process of inspection, repair or replace before the cylinder and be painted and reassembled.

When all six cylinders pass this rigorous process the engine manufacture tells us we can call the cylinders overhauled and we can reinstall the cylinders back onto the engine. 

By being able to to this process ourselves we are able pass considerable savings over to our customer, the world wide mission community.The savings can range between $500 and $2500 per cylinder! 

Thanks for keeping us in your prayers, Josh