I was at the machine shop today talking to the shop owner about wanting to get a head O-ringed and he told me that he has done several gas engines like this and some Perkins engines came factory like this. What he does is sleeves the block, but leaves the sleeve sticking out of the top of the deck just a hair (he said he would research how many thousandths would work on a cummins), he said this would be stronger and work better than O-rings, the down side is this is something that you would do when doing a full rebuild and even then it cost more than O-ringing, but since I do have one block that would need to be sleeved it might be an option. He said it's like getting a block sleeves and an O-ring job for the same price.....Is this a new concept? Anyone ever done this? Is this even sound advice?

 

Heck, why not take it a step further and cut a .010 grove in the head for the lip of the sleeve to sit in, this would have to be stronger than a fire ring and not need to be re-torqued for heating cycles....

 

I'm really suprised someone hasn't chimed in on this....I just might try this option but was hoping to hear any reasons why this would or wouldn't be a good idea and find out if anyone has ever tried this....

 

I wish I could draw a picture.....but the problem is that oring block and heads have a receiver groove in the opposing piece. Having a sleeve stick up isnt going to be received by the head, even if the head is cut for the raised portion. The other down side is the sleeves themselves... Ill stick with stainless wire oring in the block and receiver groove in the head.

Also, many many people have run 80 -100 + psi...on conventional o rings.

 

Sounds like a lot of work to the block and a reduction in cylinder capacity, requiring smaller diameter pistons just off the top of my head.

I know that in the old CAT engines some were designed to be able to do this to just one cylinder with the engine in place, accessing teh rod and piston through a cover plate on the side of the block, of course it wasn't to produce a fire ring, just sleeve a blown out cylinder...

I think an o-ringed head would be easier and cheaper....

 

Our engines don't have sleeves, so the big issue here is the cost of full sleeving. Not only that, but "dry" sleeves for non-sleeved engines are very thin compared to engines that came stock with "wet" sleeves which are relatively thick. Just more complicated to do with minimal benefits. Even if a cylinder was wiped out and you were to sleeve it, it would still probably be more practical to simply dry sleeve the bad cylinder and o-ring the head. Accuracy on the process is easier with headwork too. setting deck height on sleeves is difficult to compare in accuracy to an o-ringed head.

 

On a wet sleeve engine its called cylinder protrusion and the liner sits into the deck with or without shims and the head clamps down onto the liner with the head gasket around it the cylinder it is also a press fit into the deck totally different system

 

I understand what people are saying about it not being cost effective, but the reason I was considering it was because I have a block that will need to be sleeved, otherwise I would never consider this. So even if I did have it sleeved and just had the sleeves stick up even .020, would this not work at all? Even if I used a gasket meant for fire rings? Just trying to kill 2 birds with one stone here...

 

The problem with doing this the cylinder wall in the block has to be cut to hold the liner and the lower cast wall will not hold the clamping force of the head and bolts torqued this way, is why on larger cummins the deck is thick and cut into the block to hold the liner as well it is a press fit and protrusion is miked and or shimmed to be equal across the deck for equal clamping force on the head the 5.9/6.7 are not designed for this

 

ok, that makes sense, I understand what you're saying now. It's nice to be able to talk to people who have practical knowledge of this stuff....thanks again!