Guess this is good a place as any to make a report on the two AM cylinders that were compared in the saw builds thread. I labeled them A & B so their trade names would not reflect on the outcome, then again nobody cared enough to ask either. Which tells you a little bit about AM parts reputation.
So I had ordered a Farmer-tec P&C from China for a 254 as there are not a lot of options out there for it, meanwhile I did the Next best AM cylinder thread and turned out people liked Cross and what do you know but HL had a new arrival of one from them, so I ordered it up, still waiting for the slow boat from China to show. The Cross Performance showed up first and my initial reaction was, well its OK. Then the Farmer-tec showed and it actually looked better. Surely it would not be up to the standard of the Cross or would it? With a degree wheel set up both were compared to the original Mahle. Now on the box from Cross it says "meets or exceeds OEM specifications". This did not prove so but once again the Farmer-tec did. Next pistons were compared and measured, the Cross piston had a very thick window at the top and was noticeably heavier because of it. Again Farmer-tec measured very close to the Mahle, as did the pin to top measurement a few thousandths more, cross several thousandths less.
What put all this over the top was the Cross cylinder had misaligned (not on a horizontal plane, really not even close) bolt holes for the intake and exhaust. There was some minor pitting in the casting not a big deal, also big lumps in the intake port that were just weird as well as the flanges were not machined flat to make a good seal of the gasket mating surfaces(easily correctable with a flat file though)
The Farmer-tec had nice machined flanges and very smooth clean and uniform ports, had a nice bright overall look to it. The machining on the piston was a tad rougher than the Cross but that's not necessarily a bad thing as oil retention is OK too. Surely I thought the ring is beat by Cross using the Caber and it did look superior. Still was not used in favor of the (believed to be) less hard Farmer-tec, as its owner made that choice, he would rather change rings than cylinders, even though the Caber is a superior ring, it didn't make the final cut either.
So the ill famed Farmer-tec ended up being the preferred choice. I was to say the least pretty disappointed in the Cross that I was so sure would be the hot ticket. I did root for it the whole way through and did not give up on it until the bitter end. Finally had to reconcile with the fact that, it is what it is.
It bothered me a bit to write this up, I really did think it would turn out the other way around than what it did. Was this just a fluke from Cross? Don't know, others seem happy with there product. Was it a fluke from Farmer-tec as well? I would like to think that company is getting its manufacturing affairs in order and putting out better product. There's probably more people that have slammed this product, than have praised it. I can only hazard to speculate on the whole hit and miss situation that seems to prevail. Surely a culture that prides itself in being able to copy anything would be the best their is at it, maybe there is something in that same culture that allows mistakes to go out the door, instead of the do over pile. We may never understand.
The only lesson I can take away from this is, just keep ordering, eventually you'll get a good one!
.Randy will all plating flake off around the ports is it the jug material or the plating or both
