Has anyone got these? Sounds to good to be true. I sure can use these shugaboogas!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Brand-New-P...141224128QQrdZ1

Well, they are not the LN Engineering ones. Maybe produced in China? Here is there web site, but no information on where they get these things.

http://qscusa.com/

I know absolutely nothing about nickies but every now and then cynicism gets the better of me.

That website doesn't feel right.

A yahoo email address?

Is it just me or does that building look like the qsc sign has been photoshopped on?

Acute and intuitive observation which is well noted. How's about that ebay deal? Are they looking for business by EVIL means?

He has one negative feedback, the buyer says- junk made in china, the seller's response is- All parts Made in China, if U don't like, why no ask?return?r u competitor game?
So yeah, I think it's chinese stuff.

I see what is going on, am I noticing some antichinatite attitudes here? Is everything from China crap or does not your Made in Taiwan BBQ thongs or flip flops or stainless cookware or Ginsu or electronis doohiky...... work as well as mine?

I put a bore guage on a set of 98mm Nikasil chinese and it was dead dead nutz round. Cant say more than that, though I spied what looked like a little chip in the plating at the very top edge of the cylinder. very tiny though.

I would buy if I wanted to go big.

domain lookup info has been hidden, the whois record is set to private ...

Andy

PS: and yes, that logo *is* photoshopped ...

i just looked up the address on google earth and for what it's worth, the commercial building pictured on their website is in fact the building at the address listed.

Andy

I have the cast iron 96's for my car.
I'll let you know how they turn out.

I am trying a set 0f 104's that I bought from Fat Performance with JE pistons that I am ready to install when I solve my throttle linkage problems, Jervery T/B and Raby DTM and his new linkage. they checked out with very close tolerances. they are cast and not billits like LNeng.

Bernie

We're not supposed to get political here so I will refrain.

"Nickies" is a registered trademark of LN Engineering.

There is only one set of "Nickies" and you won't find them at that price, for good reason.

everything else is a knockoff with little to no real development in it's composition.

aren't the OEM six cylinders cast aluminum? I know the Nickies are awesome....

huh...no telling who the seller is. concealing a bunch of biz info is worrysome with the inventory show elsewhere in the ad. who lives in elmonte? go talk to the seller and look at the item being sold. if it's a tall, big, balding, rotund guy, run like crazy. you search expert guys should look for a biz license/tax # in that co's name.

k

These are not "Nickies." Nikasil is a plating that goes in the cylender. This is generally used for aluminum cylinders with aluminum pistons. The quiality of nikasil can very greatly. Nikasil shops in california have to deal with alot of government restrictions so the quailty is not as good. I am not sure what the restricitons are like in China so I havn't a clue if those paticular cylinders are any good or not.


What makes "Nickies" so special? I see people are saying they are awsome and well worth the $2000+.

Nickies are billet aluminum. The biggest difference is that LN Engineering has actually done product development, testing, and can tell you what pistons and rings to use as well as what ring gaps work. They know what works. And they come with a lifetime warranty.

So if you go the Chinese route with cylinders for $750. You then buy some JE pistons and rings for $500. You guess on the ring gap and expansion. You hope the quality of the plating and tolerances are good. At best you are saving $1300 over nickies. Is it worth the risk on a $6000 engine?

The quality of Chinese iron cylinders has been up and down. What will the quality of these be like? It would be a much better situation if a company in the US was supporting, testing, and doing development with the product. It would actually be nice if there was a middle ground between steel and nickies.

These are the same ones that Steve Stromberg was pushing that long while ago. Basically, they can't get shops to sell them, so they are now selling them straight to customer, undercutting their dealers, for less money. That aside, sure it's nikasil, sure it's aluminum. What kind of aluminum? At least with Nickies you get a lifetime warranty on the plating right from the platers on Nickies. What if you have a problem, do you think you are going to get the support? You get what you pay for.

As far as the pricing, in the real world you have to give dealers incentive to sell the nickies, so you have to factor in a reasonable %. Without that, you don't have shops willing to try and use your product or to resell it. That said, 90% of my business is to dealers, so having a structured price tier between retail and wholesale is only fair.

And there have been problems with QSC that you don't hear of, i've supplied Nickies to replace broken chinese ones.

If aluminum was aluminum, I wouldn't be replacing guy's mahle cylinders with Nickies on their 911s either. Metallurgy and manufacturing among other things make the difference.

Charles and I have tried on many occasions to come up with a solution for a middle ground between Nickies and cast iron cylinders.

Fact is anything we would develop that would be effective would end up costing similar to the price of Nickies.

I have used more Nickies than anyone in the world, including the second set of TIV cylinders ever made as well as the very first set of TI cylinders and the very first set of Pinzgauer Nickies. we have spent hours and days testing expansion rates, materials, ring gaps, running clearances and wear. Call the MFR of the Chinese cylinders and ask for ANY comparative data and see what they tell you.

Nickies allow us to do things that would be otherwise impossible and that is worth more to TIV engine development than anything else on planet earth to us.

Try running less than one thousandth of piston/cylinder clearance and as little as .003 ring end gap with any other cylinder successfully, furthermore try running an engine at 7,000 RPM off and on for hours at a time and never have it put a drop of oil into the breather box with any other cylinder. its not happening- period.

All my mega builds get Nickies, if the price doubled on them tomorrow you would still be getting your money's worth.

I can state for fact that Charles will stand behind his product.

He went out of his way to make everything better than new...

you don't get that kind of service anywhere else....A few dollars more but worth every penny.

Haven't used 'em, haven't had a chance to measure them either, but I fondled one at RIMCO earlier this year. They appear to be a knock-off casting of a T4 cylinder shape...very light, of course, and the plating, to my admittedly untrained eye, looked even and nicely honed. RIMCO wanted ~$600 for four... European Motorworks gets $700-ish...prolly all the same manufacturer. Next motor is probably gonna get some 100mm EMPI birals I have laying around or I might give them a try.

Hopefully in the future you'll have alusil cylinders... Just like Porsche did with 944 cylinders, silicon actually cast into the aluminum inside the cylinder walls. That would be bitchin!

Remmelle (sp?) makes alusil cylinders in France for the type 4.

The problem with alusil is that they work fine, as long as you don't get them hot. If they get hot, they go to crap. There is a reason why Porsche never used alusil again on an aircooled engine after the 911SC.

Getting a quality product out of China is very difficult. My experience has been that if you give an inch, they will take a mile. Quality is great as long as you are standing over them and watching the whole process, day in , day out. But the motiviation for profit is very powerful to Chinese businessmen (as it is for businessmen everywhere), but Chinas' "industry standards" are literally generations behind the rest of the developed world. Cost cutting will be in the works. Cheaper alloys and other raw materials will be incorporated everywhere that traceability is difficult.

Even if LN Engineering attempted to get their own fully developed design made in China, they would have great difficulty getting strict adherance to their process, materials specs etc unless they sent a guy to stand over them year round.

this is a bump to 2008...
I had some molded plastic parts made in china. they were for a mini sub inspection robot. depth, pressure and a wide range of temp required a "special secret sauce "plastic. teh first batch of parts were great. we had a VIP demo (dog and pony show) scheduled with the navy just after we shipped the last product built with the first production run parts. the next batch arrived just in time so me and my 2 best techs stayed all night to build 2 robots for the demo. at 4am we tested both subs in the tank and all was well. the next day when I arrived at the base with my demo subs, all the screws had popped out and the sub was a pile of junk. Upon investigation we discovered that the material was not what we had spec'd AND supplied to the mfgr . the the plant manager sold my plastic on the black market and substituted some cheap stuff. many trips to china later, the issue continued to pop up.

PS. I dont think everything made in china is crap.

This is the common 3rd world thinking....cuz hardly anyone gets caught or faces any legal issues doing it.

Why do you think all those Chinese schools fell down? Hardly any cement in the concrete mix!

I try to buy the best I can afford so if you can't afford Nikkies then try out the Chinese cylinders and let us know how it works out.

old thread..
but qscusa is crap

The fact is Chinese parts are here.. I fought long and hard to keep them away from the TIV for as long as possible and we held them off for 5+ years.

The issue with Chinese made parts is the QC level. The main problem is the guys that are making engine parts there don't use them and don't build engines with them so they have no first hand experience with how well they work.

The key to having parts made in China is to deal with a company that will work with you on QC levels and make sure that each and every part is inspected and measured, assume nothing.

The Chinese are ruthless bastards- if you send back parts that don't meet your tolerances they'll just sell them to your competitor cheaper and he usually won't care if they are junk or not! Lots of "Backdoor" parts come from China and most end up on Ebay.

Most of my engines and engine kits only have a single Chinese part in their composition and thats the connecting rods.. I still offer a "Made in USA" engine with all aftermarket parts being made from US based materials in US factories, but it does cost more.

In short I have used the Chinese to make rapid prototypes for test purposes and to make some "bling" accessories that have no real function.. Recently we sent one of our lower buck exhaust systems there for the 356 conversion to see if it could be made cheaper and still function as well on a 140 HP engine, I'll know soon.

Like I said, the parts are here so instead of fighting the bastards we decided to make the best of it and try to make them meet our tolerances, most of the time that requires a full rebuild of the part

These guys are just a few minutes from my house. Humm...

Better take an interpreter along..

ask em if they want their shit back lol

interesting. That shows how long THAT company will be around...

We'll see ya tomorrow, Charles. =o) (and probably the next day, and the next....)


EDIT:

Oops! I just realized that the thread is OLD. where's that embarrased emoticon?

Take along a GOOD bore gauge and a GOOD magnifying glass to see where and if the chrome plating is flaking at the top and bottom of the cylinders.
I like the Sunnen bore gauge my self.

And be willing to MAKE THEM open up a bunch of boxes of cylinders until one set meets your expectations.

This assumes you know what to look for in a nicasil style cylinder.

Cause ya can't machine them once bought. Machining the length will cut into the chrome and make it flake off at the open ends of the cylinder. In essence. you build the engine around the length of the cylinder.

THEN you have to have your after market piston manufacturer make you a custom set of pistons to a 911 spec to be compatible with these cylinders.
Aluminum cylinders take a very different piston profile that a cast iron cylinder to be correct. Unless QSC now sells pistons to match their cylinders these days.

THEN you have to know what torque specification to clamp them down with. Cause these ain't cast iron cylinders and the expansion rate and expansion length is vastly different from a stock cylinder. Hence different torque values.

And you will also have to source a ring pack from your piston supplier that is compatible with a chrome lined bore.

The Chicom pistons they sell with some of their cylinder kits flat don't work for ANY performance engine.(Tin coated shit)

If your into experimenting and you have the resources to do that... head on.
Odds are... it may not work well first time out.

They are fun to play with. Just expensive as hell until you have the learning curve down.

How much R&D are you willing to do...???????

Just something to think about.

Now back to my hole.........

Clayton

But Nikosil isn't chrome.
its Nickel, Silicon and carbide..

No. Good ol' cast iron.

2,2 E and S got Biral.

no aluminum 6's until the 2,7's 90's (which did appear in some early 2,5's and 917's...)

Yea Jake... your right. It ain't chrome.

C

I tried the china 96mm cast iron from AA. they are OK for 250. I dont thoink this fake nikie thing is worth the risk unless you have surpluss money to test it out.