I received a set of 96mm cylinders from European Motorworks today. They look great. I thought I would take example pictures of each of three different 96mm set that I have. One set is AA brand. One set if the European Motorworks (EMW) set. One is unknown to me- no markings, looks decent however I do not know the brand (any ideas?).

Please note that the AA set has about 200 miles on them, the unknown set has about 10,000 miles per previous owner and the EMW set is new.

Disclaimer- I am far from an expert- I am only taking pictures for others reference. I have no connection to any of the companies. Please let me know if I have made any mistakes.

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Interesting how tall the top/head sealing surface is on the 'unknown' cylinder, relative to the first fin.

the hone angle is really flat on the AA and unknown. the AA must be older. the current AAs have "AA" cast into the base fin. maybe one is QRS

get the rust off that AA if you intend to keep it

I should point out the reason that I am posting the pics. I am no expert however the AA jug seems so obviously poorly made. They feel like crap. The EMW jugs seem to be high quality which seems apparent in the pictures. You can feel a difference between teh jugs when you pick them up- the AA jug just feels cheap- the EMW jug feels very solid.

Could the unknown jug be NPR? The PO of my car had used many NPR parts.

I agree. The AA set that I used looked MUCH better than those, didn't have the slag between the fins either.

The AA ones are fairly old. Mine do not have a AA stamp on them but I still have the box and the box said AA (they were sealed when I got them).

I'm sure they are AA. Lots of people have complained about poor qualty. Judging by that photo I would definately agree.

By they way really appreciate you posting this. I really shows the differences!

Maybe some other folks can chime in and post their photos of different cylinders. Maybe an OEM casting, late model AA, Nickies, knock-off Aluminum cylinders, Birals, etc. If anyone has done any measuring and mocked up an engine with the specific cylinders post those comments too. What did you get for deck height, were there differences in height between the cylinders? I want details!

I really think this could be a very valuable thread for anyone building a motor.

here is a pic of some 103 nikkies

don't a lot of folks simply bore over size the 94 mm jugs? are there problems with doing this to stock 94mm jugs? are he aftermarket jugs superior in any way to the overbored stock 96 mm jugs?

got a 2056cc in process so looking for some advice

Depends on what aftermarket ones you are talking about. Nickies, are superior in every way. If you comparing them to AA then yes stock castings are superior.

Another reason to use overbored stock jugs is that it's easy to fit whatever pistion you want cast or forged. With AA you typically run with what they supply. You could toss the pistons and go with something else but if you have stockers why bother.

thaks sounds good, nickis maybe the best, but budget limits that, i need to selct my piston set now, I have optionof boring my existing jugs and will likley do that now the choice comes down to pistons.

any recommendatoin on that, and pros and cons of each type?????

JE pistons and bored stock cylinders.
The stock cylinders are just made better with better metals.

Do keep in mind that as the cylinders are getting bored out they tend to get pretty hot and can warp, so shop around for a shop that has done aircooled removable cylinders before.
Many motorcycle machine shops do this more frequently than a normal engine machine shop.

The type one market has created a culture of toss them and buy new ones. We dont have 50 cylinders to choose from so boring out the original remains one of the best options.
For a cost comparison, check EMW, the seem to have decent sets of both pistons and cylinders that have gone through a small amount of QC.

At the end of the day, the motor wont see more than 50k miles in most cases...we just dont drive them as much as our regular cars.

Rich

One reason that I wanted to start this post was because when I was looking for cylinders, I found a lot of opinions but couldn't find much objective data. I wanted to get a good set however I was not very interested in getting a stock set bored out (I didn't have a stock set, shipping jugs is a pain, and boring is around the price of new EMW jugs).

I do not remember the exact numbers when I measured the cylinder lengths. I only did this on the AA cylinders and now the EMW cylinders. I was surprised that the AA cylinders were fairly regular. The EMW jugs have been precise on my quick measurements.

I mentioned this before but there is a significant difference in the way that the cylinders feel. I realize that this is very subjective but I really think the feeling difference is significant here. The AA jugs just don't feel as solid as the EMW or other jugs that I have.

This may explain the difference in "feel" of the jugs but one problem that I did notice was when I was setting up the deck height for my engine, I used a 2 inch wide flat piece of metal between two studs. When I torqued the the piece of metal, it impressing into the jug slightly. Obviously, this would be bad for head sealing. I replaced the damaged jug with the "unknown" jug and retried my deck height checking process. I did everything the same and the metal piece did not impress into the jug. To me, this suggests that the AA metal is not as dense. (After those issues, I decided to get a new set of jugs) I have not mounted the EMW jugs yet however I doubt there will be any issue.

Another issue that I had with the AA jug was that skirt cracked from very slight trauma. By that point, I had already made the decision to get new jugs.

Also, FYI, from what I understand, the EMW jugs are made in Europe by the same company makes cylinders for Deutz.

For years Raby has been boring out stock OEM cylinders to 96mm and likes the KB pistons. He says the steel and casting in the OEM is superior to whats out there but the supply is getting thin. So use your good 94's if you have them and have them fit to Keith Black pistons.

....................Try this experiment: Clean all the cylinders-Clean. Then weigh them.......The denser cylinders will be..?...The best...denser cylinders mean less distortion at equal temperatures.(bore distortion)....Good old heat cycled a (million times) OEM cylinders have been heat sunk,have "finished warping" and wiil be as distortion free as you are likely to find. Recycling OEM cylinders is a good thing.

I cleaned and weighed three of the cylinders. The results were:
AA 5.3lbs
Unknown Jug 5.5lbs
EMW Jug 5.8lbs.

on my 2056 build I used stock 94s bored out to 96 with KB pistons...worked great, no piston skirt slap...
very strong little motor.
I would do the same again if doing another 2056....which could be in the next year or two if I don't drop in a small bore high revving 6 in to place.

I think the set I have is EMPI, I'll post pics when I get home.

The AA cylinder have had several different evolutions.. Some are decent and can be made good, while others are porous and are known to have holes and porosity right through them.

I prefer OEM cylinders to be bored. The cylinders I pulled from my 912E engine in 2002 had 99K miles on them. I had them bored to our specs and coupled the very first set of our KB pistons to them.. They went 160K miles and still looked good, the engine didn't consume oil and it was abused, neglected and saw as much as 23K miles between oil services.

I have recently re-honed these cylinders after that 160K miles of service and have reapplied them to the new version of this engine along with the same pistons, just cleaned and re-ringed them.

OE cylinders are damn nice, their hardness is a plus and they are the only cylinders that I haven't had some issue with.

I have not used the new EMW cylinders as of yet, maybe I'll buy a set for review soon as I need to build an engine to be used for exhaust system testing. Thats the hardest test work that we do, hours at wide open throttle for days in a row.

pics of 94s bored to 96s with KB pistons installed

Are there identification markings on stock cylinders or are there any characteristic findings that can help identify stock cylinders. I am wondering if my cylinder that I labelled as "Unknown" could be a stock cylinder that was bored out. The unknown cylinder doesn't have any markings that I can see.

Yes. A VW part number stamped at the bottom of the cylinder. If it doesn't have that, its not OE.

Here's what the number looks like.

Thanks for the picture. I checked my unknown cylinder and there is not a similar imprint. The only imprint that I found was in the same area and it looks like a "S".