[Formulajones]

What does a bore gauge say? Any taper? Assuming it was bored and honed correctly the first time.

Just to elaborate on one example I built. Was bored and honed (no torque plate) and the engine only had maybe 10k miles on it. Was using a little oil for a couple reasons but we'll just talk about the bore for now. During the refresh/reconfiguration it was decided a fresh hone with a torque plate should be done. Pistons were too tight anyway. First pass with the hone and there were huge voids where the hone didn't even touch the cylinder. So how do you think that ring seal was? Made a few very light passes, eventually taking the bores another .003" over and there were still voids in the bore where the hone wasn't touching it. Unfortunately that was the limit of proper piston clearance and couldn't go any further unless oversized pistons were ordered.

So it still wasn't perfect but it was at least 80% better than it was. Just never know with these things until you start touching it with the hone and a torque plate, then what you see is pretty shocking. We were lucky on that one simply because the piston to bore clearance was too tight to start with and gave us a little wiggle room. If your piston clearance is spot on, and you want to hone with a torque plate, chances are it won't clean up and you have to order a set of pistons.

I'm 50-50 on your engine builder. Some things he says makes sense and other things I think he's maybe not aware of.