Crank cases of modern car engines are made in general of light metal alloys, mostly aluminium alloys. Due to the low hardness of these alloys the use of cylinder liners, in general made of grey cast iron is required. The use of cylinder liners leads to several disadvantages. On the one hand they increase the engines weight. On the other hand the often insufficient connection between the cylinder liner and the crank case leads to low heat removal out of the combustion chamber. The different material properties of cast iron and aluminium alloys can also lead to a distortion of the liner. The aim of this work in the long term is to replace these cylinder liners with a thermally sprayed nanostructured composite coating, characterised by high hardness. Therefore in this study a coating process using a Plasma Transferred Wire Arc Unit and a cored wire is used.