Torque plate honing

[femtnmax]

For a 360 small block: All torque plates in our area are for cast iron heads.  I will be running aluminum heads, so bore distortion using cast iron plates won't be correct.
Should I:
go ahead and use torque plates for cast iron, and accept that bores won't be truly round.
OR
Don't use torque plate at all, and accept that bores won't be truly round.

Second issue:
the block I have was bored and honed without torque plates.  I am guessing that to finish hone with torque plates could increase the cylinder diameter about 0.001-0.0015, which would put my piston cylinder wall clearance for wiseco forged pistons at a maximum clearance between 0.005-0.0055.  Should I find another block, OR should I just run the bore/hone job that is there and try my best to get the rings to seat.
any comments??

[the_engineers]

I'd use the iron head plates.  The distortion from aluminum head should be closer to the distortion from the iron head torque plate than to nothing at all.

[Chryco Psycho]

I would run it as is , retain the piston to wall clearance typically the bore distortion will be less with alum heads as the torque is lower , I bet it seals up just fine

[Aussie Challenger]

  Use the torque plates but tell the machinist to only torque down to the Aluminum spec's, should be a lot closer.

[cudazappa]

This is the way I was taught:
torque the heads on the block to mfr's spec.
Use a dial bore gage and measure at least 4 points in each bore.  I like 6 in each.  Record the measurements.
remove the cyl heads and attach the torque plates.  Torque them down so you get the same measurements as the cyl head.
Now you can perform the final hone operation.

[Ck[FIN]]

I would run it as is , retain the piston to wall clearance typically the bore distortion will be less with alum heads as the torque is lower , I bet it seals up just fine

[moper]

This is the way I was taught:
torque the heads on the block to mfr's spec.
Use a dial bore gage and measure at least 4 points in each bore.  I like 6 in each.  Record the measurements.
remove the cyl heads and attach the torque plates.  Torque them down so you get the same measurements as the cyl head.
Now you can perform the final hone operation.

This is the right way to do it. That being said, use a any plate is head and shoulders over no plate. So putting it into percentages say, the iron plate hone improves iron head ring seal by 20%, then using the plate with aluminum you may only see 15% improvement. It's still worth it IMO. The above method leaves nothing to chance and will give the full 20% improvement.