Fresh Honed Cylinder, Small scratches from Rings

Hi All,
Here is the deal, I just got my block back from the machine shop. I had 2 cylinders bored out .015" over, and all 6 cylinders freshly honed. I installed all the pistons and connecting rods to the crankshaft as per MM. Compressed all the rings with the ring clamps. I lubed all the clean cylinders with light oil, and installed all the pistons. None of the rings broke, checked them all with a wooden dowle to make sure they still had thier spring in them. After they were in, i rotatedn the assembly to make sure it didn't bind up. After that I checked thru the exhaust and intake ports, and what did I find! I found very small verticle scratches on 3 of the 6 cylinders! I freaked out a little bit, then calmed down, and got my micro file and began to look at the scratches. You could see them very distintcly from the exhaust and intake ports. but with the sharo file end, I didn't catch on them?? I then said screw it, and pulled out the assembly to look from the top. From the top you can barely even see them!!?? I can see them.. the find won't feel them, and I can't get my fat hands into the small bores to check for myself.. Any suggestions?

Normal! That's what rings do as they break in. Toss it back together and go boating.

Jeff

Thank GOODNESS! Thanks FastJeff! Thats what I was hopeing to hear! Thats a relief! I'll keep you guys posted on how she turns out!

Another question.. The AUTOBLEND units that came with these newer Mariner 115HP, Keep or Toss? Lots of people say TOSS? Whats everybodys opinion on them?

Toss it. That thing does not work at all.

I would get rid of the auto-blend, many many failed.

But to be fair in defence of the contraption, one of my closest friends has an autoblend on his 1990, 90 horse, which he has ran since brand new and is still functioning perfectly today - I can't convince him to scrap it (and the motor gets alot of use).

So maybe, like him, you would have the one unit out of every hundred produced that actually works as designed.

But given that Merc came right out and stated that Autoblend should never be added to a motor that was not originally equipped or replaced if it fails, that's a pretty strong piece of advice against running a system they invented...