Lisle15000 Engine Cylinder Hone

Genuine Lisle hone should last for years.

Received the hone fast and in good shape except it wasn't shipped with the correct stone set. Called Lisle customer service and they sent the correct stones promptly free of charge. Very happy with Lisle products and customer service. Thank you.

Used one before. Works professionally.

The tool is awesome! So glad something like this exists. Works exactly as described. Comes with 80 and 180 grit stones with wipers for each, the extension, sandpaper on a flat peice of wood and a metal brush.However mine showed up with an extension shaft that is not straight. On just 1 hour on the first set of stones it's tapered the bore .10-.15mm. I had a 0.05 taper to begin with. You may need to make your own shaft or modify a threaded bolt if you get one like mine. Also on engines you can't pass the tool all the way through the bottom the stones may be too long and you may need to cut away contact on 1/4 to 1/2 the stone so it doesn't dwell and Barrell or taper like it did to mine. No need to order special short stones or a different hone if you have a Dremel with a cut off.

Looks good

For reference, I earned my way through college as a professional motorcycle and marine mechanic, and I've kept my hands in small engine repair and performance work as a sideline now for decades. So, I know what I'm talking about. I own and regularly use thousands of dollars worth of hand and power tools.I purchased the Lisle 15000 rigid hone because I'd heard you can use them to grind a cylinder out to the next oversize, thereby eliminating machine shop charges. So, is this really possible?In my experience, not for most engines. There were two problems: build quality of the hone, and obstructions in the crankcase.First the quality problems. The hone works on a universal joint style connection between cutting head and driving rod. In principle, this is fine. The best Sunnen hones do the same. Unfortunately, the four pivot points in this hone are created with standard roll pins that pressed/driven in and then ground off flush. Two of the four pins fell out of my hone withing a few minutes of first use. I got them stretched-out to fit tigher and pressed them back in, but it was a harbinger of frustrations to come.Second problem: Inability to stroke the hone far-enough through the cylinder to get straight cuts:The problem is not that you can't remove material or that this hone won't correct an out-of-round condition. It will most certainly do both of those well. But removing taper and producing a straight bore with a precision fit is far beyond the capabilities of this tool with most small displacement automotive blocks. And I'll tell you why.To be fair, you might very well be able to produce a good fit and straight bore in cylinders that can be unbolted from the block, thereby eliminating obstructions from both ends of the cylinder. But for small displacement automotive engines (I was working an a Suzuki 2.0 liter, J20A block), there are obstructions just below the bottom of the cylinder wall. Thus, you CANNOT push the hone much deeper than flush with the bottom of the cylinder walls. So, grinding a proper cross-hatch pattern means pulling the hone well out of the top of the cylinder, but reversing the stroke just beyond the bottom. Result: the top of the cylinder is being ground all the time, while the bottom at most half of the time. This WILL grind a taper into the cylinder this way.Now you can muck around dressing the stones, but you'll still grind more at the top and middle than at the bottom. This wears the stones unevenly, and you'll be re-dressing the stones every several strokes.I used the included (and cheap) sandpaper-glued-to-a-stick tool to dress the stones to a reverse taper, thereby grinding with less pressure on the cylinder walls the closer you move to the top. Result: bad, bad, BAD! A proper piston fit requires honing the cylinder walls out to a tolerance of a few ten-thousandths of an inch. There is no possible way to get that precision by adjusting your cutting tool with a hunk of ultra-coarse sandpaper glued to a stick.What I got was a hone job that looked absolutely perfect to the naked eye, but measuring with a precision bore gauge revealed overall taper, with "waves" of inaccuracy at various depths in the cylinder. It just cannot be done properly with such a crude tool.In the end, I had to take the block to the machine shop after all--and that after over $200 spent on this tool, extra stones, and a powerful low-speed drill capable of running the hone without overheating. Talk about frustrating!!My advice? If you are working on a removable cylinder, you might just make this tool work. You could take long strokes and frequent measurements with a bore gauge, and adjust the dwell time of your honing pattern to achieve a more-or-less straight and accurate over-bore. Maybe this even works with larger displacement engines that have more room below the cylinders. And it would certainly be easier on engines that can accept larger clearances between piston and cylinder wall.But if you are working on a block that has obstructions close to the bottom of the cylinders you'll never cut the cylinder to be straight and accurate enough for a precision fit to your pistons. Seriously, the machine shop charges WILL be cheaper than trying to do the impossible with a cheaply-built hone, and then paying the machine shop do it anyway in the end.In summary, this project cost about $250 dollars in poor quality tools that will mostly sit in my toolbox until I do the next rebuild on an engine with removable cylinders. That's NOT a good deal. And for that reason I cannot recommend this product.

GREAT TOOL

Lisle makes great hones. I used a smaller model for finish honing bushings in a lathe I restored and this hone for deglazing cylinders in a Cummins rebuild. This is basically the same mechanically as the equivalent sunnen hone. I prefer to use these dry as they can be used both ways but The stones don’t load up as bad, dry. Just be sure to wire brush them here and there to keep them clean when dry honing. I was able to pull taper and out-of-round just about out of my oem bore Cummins block, while keeping piston to wall clearance within spec to re-use oem size pistons. Worked perfectly!