Anyone have a recommendation for an inexpensive sonic

tester to measure cylinder wall thickness? Dropping a grand or more for one is out of the question. Wondering if there is one that will do the job for a couple hundred or less.

My expensive one quit on me so I just ordered a 8812 model on amazon and it will be here next week. It was about 60.00 cheaper on eBay but the guy had a sketchy past and delivery was kinda open ended. His ad also said there may be added fees.

Ohhh it was around 220.00 and should be here Tuesday

Some things in life and motor building you do not want to buy the cheaper ones out there, like choosing a brain surgeons
Either buy a good one now or take your block to a shop who has a good one and pay them each time you need them to do your blocks

I hear you Cab, but as long as it is accurate to .010 I can use it to pick between blocks and see if I have enough meat to bore and or hone. If I have one that is borderline questionable then I can get it checked out at a machine shop.

Some kits come with a calibration plate to check them. If not check a place on the block that you can check with mics or calipers.

Would like to hear back from you after you have a chance to try out your purchase for sure. I don't have to have it today so I can wait before making a purchase. Did you get the 6mm probe with yours?

If the OP is in the same situation I was, I had trouble finding a shop that had one! I thought w/ all the shops around here that surely I could fine one easily, but it took longer than I thought. I called PAR, Gene Fulton, Honeycutt's, and several others before I found one place about 2 hours away. All he used it for was checking some of the stock cast heads for round track engines, lol.
I was having a World Hemi block checked out to make sure there was no problem going to 4.5" bore.

It arrived late today instead of next Tuesday. I brought it up to the house with me and I will
Read up on it and try to do some testing tomorrow. I didn’t order the 6mm probe yet as I only need it for checking a set of heads I am porting. I have a small block 4.030 engine on the stand ready to build so I will throw some gell in it to see if it will read.

Ok I did some testing yesterday and today. There is a steel button on it to check calibration that measures .198 and it was dead nuts on. Being in the house last night I grabbed a butter knife and it was .040 with both the sonic checker and digital calipers. In the shop today my motor mount on my block was reading app .630 and dc (digital calipers) were reading .532 so you hit the vel button to change the density number in the meter and make a note on the instructions of what that number is. Same with aluminum so I have three different numbers for those metals. It takes about 15 seconds to set up once you take and keep your settings. As usual the instructions suck bigtime. I’m not saying the probe is to big for blocks (app 10mm) but at a later date I will probably order a 6mm probe. Money was a little tight right now.

I got one of the cheap ones from Amazon for Christmas, but haven't tried it out yet.
Have a 440 that is 0.030" over and still has a ring wear ridge. It looks like it will clean up at 4.375" (0.055" over), but not sure how thick the walls are.
I might get some 4" schedule 40 pipe to check the accuracy / calibration on curved steel.

Steel, aluminum cast grey iron and compact graphite iron all need the proper frequency(their not the same frequency ) to be able to measure correctly
As already mentioned you need to calibrate it before using it to a known thickness on THAT block

Thanks PBR for taking the time to reply.. Get the velocity right for cast iron and seems it should work fine.