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Nickies™

LN Engineering is proud to offer our Nickies™, the ultimate cylinders for your powerful & reliable aircooled engine.

It is not always that you hear high performance and long life paired together, especially when referring to performance aircooled engines. It is very typical, even with high-powered cooling systems, that high-performance engines run too hot, and as you know heat kills!

Higher operating temperatures result in a thermally overloaded engine that, among other things, has cylinders that fail to seal against the head and have significantly shorter life spans versus stock displacement engines.

Nickies™ make the difference!

Nickies™ ruled as legal in SCCA as replacement cylinders. Read the ruling here.

Our nikasil-plated, CNC billet, solid aluminum Nickies™ provide:

• Significantly reduced head and oil temperatures
• Increased horsepower from less heat soak, friction, and improved concentricity of bores when torqued and hot
• Significantly reduced cylinder wear and increased increased ring life due to increased strength and additional cooling
• Superior oiling (Nikasil is oleophilic i.e. oil-liking)
• Tighter ring gaps and lower tension rings with improved ring seal, without the need for gapless rings
• Reduced friction
• Although rarely needed, cylinders can be re-honed or re-plated at a fraction of the original price
• Our alloy is specifically designed to match JE Pistons' 2618 forgings allowing for greater strength than mahle pistons and reduced piston to cylinder clearance
• Larger bores than those previously offered in both slip fit and machine in spigot diameters possible because of the strength and ductility our alloy and billet construction offers, i.e. slip fit 100mm 3.2 to 3.5, slip-fit 103/107 cylinders for the 3.6, or even 105mm machine-in 4.0 cylinders!
• Special bore sizes and custom application-specific cylinders available at little or no additional cost
• Lifetime warranty on plating for Nickies™, provided by Millennium Technologies!
• Beware of inexpensive import cast aluminum cylinders of unknown quality and origin.
• Application notes:
• All cylinders supplied with surface ground deck except 2.0 or cylinders ordered custom with flame ring or sealing ring provisions.
• 2.0 cylinders utilize original head sealing arrangement and accept factory head gasket
• 2.2/2.4 cylinders use 906 style fin geometry to provide even more cooling which requires aftermarket air deflector tin OR modification of stock deflectors
• 964 and later cylinders are not cut for o-ring or head gasket provision and use late-964/993 style sealing surfaces as shown in the photos above; early 964 heads must be updated per factory bulletin. Specifications can be found in Porsche Carrera 964 Technical Data Without Guesswork, Bentley Publishers, 15-4, cylinder head machining.

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What sizes are available for my Porsche 911?

Under-bores are available for any model, i.e., do build a 2.7 on a 3.0/3.2, 3.2 on a 3.6, as are custom cylinders in any configuration desired in 6-8 weeks. Complete Nickies cylinder listing available here in pdf format.

LN Engineering currently stocks 87.5mm 9.5 and 10.5:1 Nickies kits for the 2.2 or 2.4; 93mm 9.5 and 10.5:1 kits for the 2.7; 98, 100, and 102mm 3.0/3.2 kits in 9.5 or 10.5:1 as well as in 7.5 and 8.0:1 for 3.4 turbo (100mm only comes in 7.5:1), and our 103 slip-fit in 11.5 or 12.5, as well as the machine in 105 in 11.5 or 12.5. All pistons come set up for race valves/cam, coated skirts, light pins, and milled for extra weight savings. Custom kits available anytime.

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The Secrets behind Nickies™

How are Nickies™ different from a factory cast aluminum cylinder?

There were three varieties of aluminum cylinders installed from the factory by Porsche. First biral cylinders with aluminum fins cast around cast iron liners. Then there were early aluminum cylinders, utilized a ferral or chromal plating. Later, Porsche turned to Mahle's Nikasil and Kolbenshmidt's Alusil. Although both were aluminum, that's where the similarity with "Nickies™" ends. So how are Nickies™ better?

• Nickies™ have up to 6.5 fins per inch

• More fins means more surface area, up to 65% more.

• Billet means we can choose an a material based on strength, not how well it flows into a casting mold, so we use the strongest cold worked extruded alloys available.

• Our aluminum has four times the thermal conductivity of cast iron and a minimum 50% higher tensile and yield strength than cast iron.

• Our aluminum has twice the thermal conductivity and a minimum 50% higher tensile and yield strength over the aluminums used by Mahle and Kolbenschmidt .

• Stronger materials and thicker walls means less or no warping, leading to less oil consumption, increased ring life, and increased compression.

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What makes Nickies™ the latest step in the evolution of the aircooled cylinder?

OE cast aluminum vs. Billet Nickies™

In the development phase of LN Engineering's Nickies™ cylinders, we were considering casting our cylinders, but we were unhappy with the attention to detail that is left out of typical castings. Even with the best of castings, there are limitations. Stock Porsche cylinders were cast.  While advantageous for mass production, there are downsides to casting.  First, casting poses a big difficulty to a strong grain structure. Our billets are from a special extrusion, custom-made by Alcoa, allows for the strongest possible grain pattern, making for a much stronger and thermally conductive material while being much less brittle than casting alloys, so they are more forgiving to high cylinder pressures and detonation. Through advanced metallurgy, material science, and engineering, LN Engineering's Nickies™ cylinders provide:

1. Increased Cylinder Strength: The material used in stock cast aluminum Porsche cylinders has a tensile yield that varies from 36k to 42k psi. Through our close work with Alcoa and our platers, we have developed an alloy that both exceeds the strength of stock cylinders and has excellent adhesion for the nikasil process, which is essential for longevity. Each batch of our custom extrusion goes through intensive QC and is up to 50% stronger than cast aluminum alloys used by Mahle for factory cylinders. Our alloy is up to 35% stronger than cast iron alloys which are known for great thermal stability, making our cylinders the best available!
    

2. Increased Cooling: We achieve this through a 100% increase in thermal conductivity with our custom alloy over the casting alloy used in stock cast aluminum cylinders. Nickies™ have up to 400% increase in thermal conductivity over cast iron cylinders too. Paired with these improvements in material science, we then proceed to CNC machine 6.5 fins per inch versus the typical 4 fins per inch on cast cylinders. This provides a noticeable increase in surface area, up to an extra 65% more surface area. Draft, inaccuracy, and flash are inevitable, leading to less-than-ideal cooling fins.  When stepping down from the mass production scale, tooling is even more limited and only allows thick cooling fins.   This is why typical castings have such poor finnage, usually about 3-4 fins per inch. Since we CNC-machine our Nickies™ from our own proprietary extruded billet, we can control the exact shape and size of the cooling fins, resulting in over 6+ fins per inch with perfect, rounded leading edges.  Then, we media blast and acid etch them to remove the shiny surface, further increasing cooling ability by increasing air turbulence.

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What pistons can you use with Nickies™?

LN Engineering’s custom forged pistons are the best of their kind. Every piston is custom made, so whatever the case, we work with your desired engine specifications to make the ideal pistons for your application, period.

$1065 for Custom JE Pistons (6 cylinder) including performance rings, wrist pins, and locks.

This special pricing only valid with purchase of Nickies cylinders or other qualifying product or service, such as our cylinder reconditioning. Popular compression ratios typically in-stock and custom CR made-to-order.

Split oil returns are standard as well as nikasil-compatible ring. Internal lightening, mill under crown, anti-detonation groove, lightweight pins, accumulator groove, dual forced pin oilers, lateral gas ports, ultra-groove, forged side relief / strutted pistons, thermal barrier coatings, skirt coatings, oil shed coating, and any other options extra. Please call for recommendations and pricing on upgrades for your particular application.

Our custom forged pistons are the best of their kind.  They feature the low-friction slipper skirts, low weight, balancing within 1/2 a gram, and are manufactured from the superior 2618-aluminum forged alloy material when specified for use with our Nickies™ cylinders. Our Nickies cylinders are designed for use with JE's pistons just like Mahle cylinders work best with Mahle pistons!

Good quench allows for faster burn and better thermal efficiency, leading to better gas mileage, lower potential for detonation, and more power.

We can supply JE, CP, Wossner, Mahle Motorsports, Omega or any other forged pistons to meet your needs or even supply cylinders to fit your existing pistons.

Whatever the case, here’s the bottom line: we work with you to provide ideal pistons and cylinders for your application, period.

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Click here for more information about LN Engineering's Nickies Cylinders.

2008 Pricing Schedule

Contact us at 815-472-2939 or info@LNengineering.com to bring your “tried and true" Aircooled engine to the new standard of precision performance!

Read our blog at http://c4cab.blogspot.com/

LN Engineering Nickies™ are Proudly 100% Made in the USA!

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As seen in Excellence Magazine

Chris Carroll's Turbokraft, Inc

Website last updated Feb 1st, 2008. Contact webmaster at info@LNengineering.com Copyright LN Engineering LLC ©2008.