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Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 10:12 pm Nov 23 2025
by Chuck78
Has anyone here used https://SPcylinders.com for repairs and/or stripping and replating of your cylinders?

https://www.spcylinders.com/product-cat ... irt-bikes/

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Their cylinder repair process webpage does definitely inspire confidence in their work:

https://www.spcylinders.com/cylinder-repair-process/

The owner or perhaps a veteran employee have posted quite a bit in one of the 2-stroke research and development forums. They sound like a pretty highly competent operation, but I know of no one with firsthand feedback.
PowerSeal USA do great on the plating, but everything else including inspection of port and chamferring defects/flaws as well as overlooking flaws in their own welding/machining repair processes, PowerSeal doesn't seem to really be on top of things with. Millennium do great on all the above, but their plating perhaps isn't quite as durable according to a lot of complaints from various people including some veteran engine builders. EDIT - Gary Braun the porting wizard at Millennium has said they are developing a new type of cylinder plating, and I believe were looking for a few beta testers of this product before releasing it to the general public!

PowerSeal also have a bad habit of beadblasting the head gasket surface when cleaning up the cylinder. When using an MLS head gasket, multi-layer steel, that's a huge sin in engine building as it completely blows the required surface finish level out of the park into completely different (rough, not smooth) territory, with only a serious viton-coated MLS head gasket standing a chance of sealing properly on.

https://www.facebook.com/spcylinders/

Another option for cylinder plating is quite welcome now I'd say...

https://web-origin.spcylinders.com/prod ... -and-hone/

Re: Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 11:06 am Nov 24 2025
by SS109
Hmm, never heard of them.

Re: Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 11:15 pm Nov 24 2025
by billie_morini
Chuck, no, not familiar. I couldn't find their location on on their website. However, their telephone area code is Daytona Beach, Florida.

Re: Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 01:37 am Nov 25 2025
by SpruceItUp
Well, if they are in Daytona I'd be willing to send a cylinder to them at some point. My CR125 is likely going to need its cylinder replated at its next rebuild, which will probably be pretty soon (Maybe, I've got a lot of projects going on). I might give them a call when the time comes, as they are significantly closer to me than the other two options for replating, with me being in Tampa.

Re: Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 04:07 pm Nov 25 2025
by SS109
Their address is on their order form. SP Cylinders, 137 Botefuhr Ave, Daytona Beach, Florida 32118

Looks like a private residence to me and surely not where plating is, or could be, done. I would bet they send your cylinder to one of the big three (Millennium, Power Seal, or US Chrome) to do the work. It's also kind of odd that if you go to Google street view the whole residence is blurred out. Hmm.

Re: Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 10:34 pm Nov 25 2025
by brademan76
good gumshoeing SS109!

Re: Nickel silicon carbide plating from SP Cylinders?

Posted: 06:25 pm Nov 26 2025
by Chuck78
10 days turnaround time advertised, that's pretty darn fast if he's outsourcing the plating... Perhaps he doesn't do the work at the receiving address, but keeps irregular hours so has packages shipped to his residence? I'd thought I had seen some shop photos somewhere that clearly were not in a residential garage. It still could be outsourced, but maybe not?