NASA physicists Mike Mirtich, Bruce Banks, and Frank DiFillipo developed diamond-like thin films about 20 years ago. I was a student working there at the time. There is also a clear variant of the coating that can be applied to optics. Several companies have been spun off as a result of their work. No personal experience with DLTF coatings, but I've seen some of the tribology data and heard they work.
20 years ago? Wow...
I e-mailed the company and asked them about piston skirt coating. I wonder how much better it would be than moly coating
I'm not impressed with moly or ceramic coatings. I had ceramic applied to the piston heads and moly to the skirts on a stroker motorcycle engine. At roughly 10K miles, I need to rebore the cylinders. Not good. At about 5K, I had a roller rocker arm break (factory defective), and had the cylinder off. The skirt coating had already worn through by that point. It's less than a 0.001 in. thick. The ceramic coating was also gone. If it was there, I couldn't see it after having cleaned the piston by soaking it in kerosene. Again, no personal experience with the diamond coatings, but I wouldn't waste money on moly.
I'm not impressed with moly or ceramic coatings. I had ceramic applied to the piston heads and moly to the skirts on a stroker motorcycle engine. At roughly 10K miles, I need to rebore the cylinders. Not good. At about 5K, I had a roller rocker arm break (factory defective), and had the cylinder off. The skirt coating had already worn through by that point. It's less than a 0.001 in. thick. The ceramic coating was also gone. If it was there, I couldn't see it after having cleaned the piston by soaking it in kerosene. Again, no personal experience with the diamond coatings, but I wouldn't waste money on moly.
Thanks larry, you've given me some insight