Bore prep

[sporty]

micro mesh 12,000 is rated on some sites at 2 micron and some as 1 micron.

Either way, as the micro mesh wears, it wears in a way lowers the micron rating.

Put it this way, if I use the micro polish after my process, it dulls the wheel bore !!


Micro polish is something I found in llate 2005/Jan 2006. Then went from there to using meguirs plast-X, plastic lens polish.

I initially used these items on my sons stock soap box derby car. We can not paint them and the plastic came dull.

Then went onto using in the bsa wheel bores.


I have tried novus 2 also. Some really like novus 2.

But again for me, it dulls the wheel bore if I try using it after the current process I came up with.

Now naturally there is a debate of not as slick is needed and works better with oil, but I have not seen neither for me.


I have used this process on both bsa wheels for graphite and oil with very good results.

I also have played with after the micro mesh / carbon rod proces, using diamond lapping film in the wheel bore with good results also.

I know of two other products, I have not used either but I had wanted to use them and play with them. both polishes. one is .02 micron (wow).


I just ran out of energy and interest to keep developing and tinkering. Im just ready to retire and will be around awhile yet to help others.

But there our a few out there right now, already developing new methods and pushing the speed.

Sporty

[habcdb]

Sporty, Thank you. You have helped me a lot.

[Stan Pope]

Some test results...and not what I expected. ...

Interesting!

Questions:
1. Did you assure that axle orientation did not factor into result?
2. What was the degree of polish of the axles? More polished than the bores? less?

The reason for question #1 is to eliminate other likely causes for the result.

The reason for question #2 are based on a hypothesis that the (unlubricated) friction coefficient between the axle (a hard surface) and the wheel bore (a softer) surface is much more heavily influenced by the roughness of the hard surface, especially when that hard surface has significantly less roughness (finer polish).

I don't know that the hypothesis is true, but it seems suported by this study.

[davem]

Stand said

Questions:
1. Did you assure that axle orientation did not factor into result?
2. What was the degree of polish of the axles? More polished than the bores? less?

The reason for question #1 is to eliminate other likely causes for the result.

The reason for question #2 are based on a hypothesis that the (unlubricated) friction coefficient between the axle (a hard surface) and the wheel bore (a softer) surface is much more heavily influenced by the roughness of the hard surface, especially when that hard surface has significantly less roughness (finer polish).

1. yes. Axles orientation controlled via sharpie dot in the 12 o'clock position for each axle.
2. The axles were polished more than the bores.
Axle prep steps below:
- bevel / taper axle heads
- micro-mesh 600MX
- micro-mesh 800MX
- micro-mesh 1200MX
- Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish
- Mother's Billet Polish

[davem]

Sporty asked

why not do the test with both the same first process ?

Well - I had the rod burnished set of wheels from last years car.
I was really testing to see what had the greater effect - fine bore polishing vs. bore burnishing with a graphite-moly rod.
My conclusion last year - was that rod burnishing with Hodges (best) or Hob-e-lube (next best) followed with Max-V lube at assembly provided significant time improvements (old post of mine out there somewhere).
- Conclusion 1 - burnishing with graphite-moly is better than not burnishing
- Conclusion 2 - Max-V lube added after a base application of graphite-moly improves performance
- Conclusion 3 - combining graphite-moly rod bore burnishing with extra application of Max-V was the fastest combo tested


Sporty Asked

Did you use dills pipe cleaner ?

Nope - I used the extra-fluffy pipe cleaners that come with the Hodges polishing supplies.


Sporty said

Hope this helps, as I would suspect if you used my bore prep process for awana wheels, that was for bsa wheels, you likely made the wheel bore bigger !!

Do you have pin guages ? you might want the check the bore diameters on those two sets of wheels and see if, indeed using the bsa bore prep process, made the awana softer wheel bores to big ???

Stock Awana bores are .098 in dia
Pin gauges show .098 in dia for the fluffy burnished wheels (set 1)
and .098 to .099 in dia for the rod burnished wheels (set 2).

So - rod burnished wheels were slightly larger - which would indicate they should have been slower. And I don't think this appreciably affected the results.
Note the burnishing rod is .099 in dia.
I did not measure any bore increase using the .055 in dia carbon rod and micro-mesh polishing.

[sporty]

Thanks for the added info.


Since I am doing with this all this testing stuff. retiring.

Can you try the test with just doing the 12,000 grit micro mesh on the awana wheels ?

I am curious what the results are .

I have never tinkered with awana wheels. Only BSA wheels.


Perhaps you could take the testing further and go and do this with bsa wheels ????

Awana wheels are so easy to damage the bores. I can not imagine 4,000 micro mesh or even 6,000 micro mesh, being fine enough to not cause damage. Thats why I would hope you might try just 12,000 and not the other steps for bsa wheels.


Sporty

[Stan Pope]

1. yes. Axles orientation controlled via sharpie dot in the 12 o'clock position for each axle.

Thanks response.

You're good! I can't get marked bent axles back in close enough to avoid needing more adjustment.

[Allagash]

Sporty

Sporty,

I'm dying to see this video and for some reason it's asking me for a password when I click on it. Is there another way to watch the video?

Thanks!

[PWRookie]

Sporty or anyone else, new to here, but I saw how Murph is able to rotate the wheel by using a Harbor Freight mini lathe. Is there some type of chuck or adapter jig for a drill press or hand drill that can serve the same purpose?

[sporty]

Sporty or anyone else, new to here, but I saw how Murph is able to rotate the wheel by using a Harbor Freight mini lathe. Is there some type of chuck or adapter jig for a drill press or hand drill that can serve the same purpose?

Someone tried to make a wooden one with a rod / bolt/ to go into a drill press.


To do the bore.

Sporty

[FatSebastian]

And here's the Reader's Digest version of Sporty's bore prep method.