1.7 cylinder block bores - reclamation

Anyone any experiences of reclamation of worn cylinder bores in the 1.7 block?
Basically bought a complete engine really cheap as I initially wanted just the head to rebuild and now looking at rebuilding the whole engine to a decent normally aspirated spec.
The nikasil bores have worn through to the aluminium in the area the top ring reaches TDC, so is nikasil re-coating, re-honing an option? (several companies offer this service), or I've seen a couple of 1.7 blocks on lightning motorsports social media pages that seem to have had steel liners fitted which is what I'd prefer for my block.
An email to matt at lightning next port of call......

Anything is possible with time and money, it depends on what type of engine you want at the end of it. Whilst possible to re-nikasil the bores, it would be financially improbable with minimum units required and eye watering costs.

Original piston rings and big end bearings are no longer available, so you have to mix and match if you want new ones.

So possible? Yes? Worth it? Probably not. Says the man who just had it done bar the bores and big ends........

Current engine in car is frp spec , inlet,cams,ex manifold, ECU, also put one of the frp gearboxes that got cleared out by ford in it, so I'm moving the game on a bit, already got jenvey direct to head bodies for the build, a head that I'm modding ,so the block is pretty much at the point where I'm thinking if I'm gonna use this engine for a fair few years (I could drop it into a mk6/7 fiesta one day) I'm going to do it once and do it right, so not ruling out high compression pistons and steel rods.

If you are in for the long run, I would put in steel liners. The reason: it enables you to use the set of NPR piston rings for Honda A18 engine that you can get without problems.

The bottom end on lightning's site , looks like steel liners the way to go then.

You'll be looking at £800 for liners, plus you will need new pistons and prob rods as I don't think you can run the originals on steel liners, that will cost on top another £1200-1300

No, that is not true. You can run the original pistons in steel liners without any problems, as long as you match the gap accordingly. The piston rings are the parts that actually are in contact with bores (in this case liners) and provided you matched the materials correctly there will be no problems. That is why I suggested putting liners in; the NPR set of piston rings for Honda A18 engine is exact match (dimensionally) and the material treatment is also fitting as the Honda engine uses cast iron block (i.e. the first compression ring is chromed what is not suitable for nikasil.
Conrods have absolutely nothing to do with bore materials as they are not in contact with anything bar the pistons. For big ends you can use suzuki shells, please do check my thread, the info is there

Wild e coyote - great investigation work on the big end bearings!! Thanks, £800 getting on for Darton sleeve money that the Honda guys go for!!
Got a 66000 mile engine in another car that may be better suited but a solution must be out there for these great little units.

Is finding a better block not an easier and cheaper solution?

I knew there was something about the rings that made them not suitable for steels bores, I didn't realise you could get the correct rings from another source! The reason I said to get the rods is based on their compatibility with forged pistons (as you'd unlikely fit performance pistons in standard rods) I am aware they do not make contact with the bores too

There's a few blocks on that well known auction website , might be worth having a look at them , one has similar wear around the TDC area of the bores though.

Stripped the rest of this engine today , engine dated from late 1997 , so it's an early one, but this leads the conclusion that high sulphur fuel that was renowned for destroying nikasil bores in jags & bmw's until the fuel was pulled in January 1999 probably had some contribution towards it.