[SEL] bore and sleave an engine question

[Ben Frazer]

Hi all,

As I was saying earlier, you can sleeve a cylinder for free with
nothing more than a decent lathe and a bit of knowledge (a small bit
will do coz I managed)! I will now try to briefly explain how we did
our 6hp throttle gooverned Famous.

Firstly, we went to our local diesel engine re-builder and asked for
some used wet sleeves at the correct diameter for a 6hp Famous, I
think about 6" from memory. After we were given the sleeves (because
they were in the scrap heap anyway), we went back to the shed where
the lathe was. The lathe we used for the job had to be about 6' to 8'
between centres.

We began by removing the top of the tailstock. The base was left on
the bed then a plate was made to fit on the tailstock base and a 3"
bearing was fitted to the plate, paying carefull attention to getting
it absolutely square to the bed.

We then removed the tool post and replaced it with a flat machined
plate with a locating dowell that fits in the same hole as the tool
post, therefore it can be swivelled to allow for setting up.

We then clamped our 8' length of 3" shaft in the chuck which we
drilled and tapped about half way along in th side to allow for a
tool.

After this set up was finished we began seting up the barrel on the
saddle of the lathe and after about an hour with shims and a dial
indicator we were ready to bore!

A couple of hours later we had bored the cylinder out to our pre
determined size and we removed it from the machine.

In about 10 minutes flat, we had the machine back as a lathe. I then
made a dummy centre for the sleeves and set each one up in the four
jaw chuck. I then simply turned them to about .004" interferance on
the bore of the barrel and parted them off to size. (I had to use two
sleeves to get the length of the barrel because trucks don't have that
long a stroke)!

After all the machining was completed, we heated up the barrel,
dropped in the sleeves and honed them out to size. Now, you can't even
see the join between the two sleeves and the engine runs like a clock.
We now have the set up to turn the lathe into a boring machine and can
use for lots of different engines.

Hope this story can help others to do their own sleeving without the
high cost of casting pistons or paying someone for sleeving.

Ben