[SEL] bore and sleave an engine question

[bill at antique-engines.com]

Agree and here's why:
A sleeve does not mean a lot of block material removal - a good sleeve is
not that thick.
A sleeve can be removed later and replaced again, should that unusual
circumstance ever happen
I collect another form of rare engine - AMC engines. Trust me, with the
very high demand and the low availability of a 1970 390 block, they are
treated like gold, if you have a good one to get rid of, you can trade it
for most anything else. A few folks race with them, and the discussion of
to sleeve or not to sleeve comes up a LOT on the forums. I mean a LOT. The
consensus is that you are not hurting the block - the sleeve does no
damage. The sleeve might actually be saving a block as the wear and abuse
is on the sleeve. Sleeved blocks see fewer problems.
In my case, my 390 had already been bored to .030 over. The forum members
and machine shop all agreed - SLEEVE IT. The sleeve job was only 80 bucks
a hole and is so good it's hard to tell there are sleeves in it. I can in
the future have it done again should I get crazy with it - but having the
rare one-year-only 1970 390 block, probably won't happen! In fact I put
later heads on it to reduce compression and installed step-dish hyper
pistons to avoid this sort of damage.

Bottom line - the amount of material removed by a good shop when
installing good sleeves is minimal.
You can then use original pistons, retaining originality and the ability
to find standard parts - meaning instead of finding some rare or unusual
size piston, etc. - you simply drop in a standard original piston. The
engine is not modified.
A sleeve can be replaced if need be - but if you resleeve and wear it that
darned much - wow - but it can be resleeved later.
Most blocks, including AMC v8 blocks, have a LOT of meat to them. You can
remove a lot of material without damage, but boring the block to oversize
and installing larger pistons, well, there you are wearing on the block
again, so in the future someone is gonna have to sleeve it anyway.

It's hard to say here, but seems most car and tractor fellows readily opt
for sleeves and the many advantages, none of them suggesting that they are
doing any damage and if anyone is gonna fuss over messing up a good block,
trust me, these AMC folks will be the first to scream bloody murder. 3 to
5K for a rebuild is nothing.

In years of auto rebuilding, I've not seen any problems with sleeves, even
with subsequent rebuilds.

Bill

> I can understand what Curt is saying to an extent but when I can bore
> and sleeve our 6hp Famous for free but to get a piston cast will cost
> me, I go for the sleeve any day and you can't tell it's been done no
> matter how hard you look.
>
> Ben
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