Reasons To Use A Torque Plate

Hi Ya'll,
We have been very busy at the shop with current projects, and hence have not been able to post much here lately, however, we promise that in the near future bi-weekly videos are going to be uploaded, as we have tons of content and info to share with fellow enthusiasts, and no secrets to keep!
In this video, we discuss the importance of torque plates. A torque plate is a block of aluminum that is CNC machined to simulate a cylinder head being bolted onto an engine block. This is because when the cylinder head is bolted onto the engine block (Iron or Aluminum Alloy), the block has a tendency to distort. This means that no matter how good of a honing machine you use, and no matter how true and round you make the cylinder during the final honing process, once the cylinder head gets bolted on, the cylinders will distort, causing possible clearance issues, and excessive wear on the cylinder walls, pistons, and the rings. The piston rings also can not seal as well in a distorted bore, causing excessive blow by issues, and in most cases, oil consumption.
If the machine work is performed with a torque plate bolted onto the block (Mainly used to final hone to size the cylinder, but also used to align hone the block) the final results are much better than an engine block that has been machined without one.
In this video you can see that we see upwards of 0.001" of distortion without the torque plate being bolted on, but with the torque plate, the number drops down to 0.0002-0.0003". A much rounder cylinder, giving us the advantage of running tighter clearances, much better ring seal, and much longer piston ring life.
we ALWAYS torque plate hone to our final desired piston to wall clearance, EVEN with the VR38Dett engine blocks. Now the VR38Dett is a whole other video by itself soon to come, but for now, we are sharing this video of a 4G63 engine block after torque plate honing. Even Ductile iron sleeves will distort with enough clamping force, hence why all of our 4B11T's are torque plated aswell.
We also use Platou honing stones, eliminating the need of a long engine break in process. The break in is done within minutes of the engine running. Essentially when the block is machined properly, we can achieve full ring seating before the engine even does a full heat cycle. Technology is improving everyday, and it is wise to take full advantage of it. Building engines that can handle enormous amounts of power, yet have a long reliable life and not cause any unnecessary headaches is why we go through the trouble of doing this, and spending the extra money to have proper machine work performed in general.
This Engine block came to us as a built short block, however the customer had doubts about the build, so we re-blue printed the short block, and found out that it was not previously toque plated. Since the customer decided to re-use his otherwise brand new pistons and not go to a size above, the tightest we could get the PTW (Piston to wall) clearance on this block was around 0.0045", a tad looser than what we usually run and prefer, but it will without a doubt function and last much longer than the previous build without the use of a torque plate.
We really hope you enjoy this video, please share, like, and subscribe for more videos, and if you want to see any videos in specific, please let us know, and we will be happy to share our knowledge with you.
We hope you have a wonderful day, till next time,
-Roni A.