I should probably remind folks that there's a list named "CorvAircraft" that I also run. To subscribe, send an email to corvaircraft-j...@mylist.net . I can tell you that there was once a lot of talk about aluminum cylinders, but as far as I know, nobody is currently flying behind them. To search the CorvAircraft search engine, see http://www.maddyhome.com/corvairsrch/index.jsp , where you'll get 28 hits on the word "nikasil".
To me, it's simply not worth it. Just lose 10 pounds your wasteline and enjoy the reliability of cast iron. This is like mountain bike parts...you can spend a lot of money on super light weight high-end "racing" parts that last no time at all, or you can buy the cheap steel stuff that just keep on running. "Racing", "high performance", and "ultra-light" are not always good, unless you have your own pit crew doing the work and a bottomless bank account. Having said that, I've never flown behind a set of Nikasil cylinders, so take that for what it's worth. I wouldn't have added another 8 gallons of fuel capacity to the plane if I thought 10 pounds made a huge difference... Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
