Good news, bad news...

Well, the good news is, that I've found a perfectly good set of liners, pistons, and rods for my '37 WC unstyled.

Bad news, is that they're coming out of my '50 WD.

After working on it pretty hard two weeks ago, I got it together and running last week.  It ran fine, but after working it a bit, I noticed that the head gasket didn't seal well... so I went back and retorqued the head again.  Still, not right.  Hand-cranking it revealed gurgling on the #3 cylinder, so I bought another gasket (Thanks AC Bill!), and popped it apart this morning, to find:


And while it looks like just a blemish, look at the mating surface of the #2 and #2 liners in the 4 o'clock and 7 o'clock positions, respectively...  definately too much distortion going on there to 'recover' that.

Normally, I'd consider other sealing options, but considering this repair:



I'll just look for another engine, and use this one's reciprocating assembly for my '37.

That's where a long bolt running between the sleevrs would pull the block together. Bottom to top in the first picture. Parallel to the head gasket.

Gerald J.

Too many cracks for me. I would get another block.

i have a bare block fdrom a wd45 will sell cheap western Iowa.

Dave, the cylinder liners should stick up above the block .002 to .004 of an inch. The cracks in the webbing between cylinders has no effect on sealing the cylinder. If the sleeves don't stick up above the deck, you will have problems. If you use these sleeves in a different engine, check height of sleeves and replace the o-rings.There are probably more engines out there running with cracked webbing than without. If there are cracks down where the O-rings seal, you have a junk block.


Edited by CTuckerNWIL - 31 May 2010 at 9:51pm

Hmmm... well that's interesting.

I'm thinkin' that the lower patch was a freeze-crack.  It's obvious that the top of the deck is not sealing, and the top ends of the liners are able to move.  After torquing, and retorquing the heads, I was getting enough coolant in #2 and #3 so that it'd gurgle good on hand-cranking... crankcase has quite a bit of coolant in it now, too.  Head is flat, and deck is flat on right and left sides, but the crack area is clearly not... one side is high.  I suspect that the webbing down in the block is cracked from the same freeze, and the only reason why it was sealing before, is because it'd been fed about seven bottles of stop-leak...  the crud holding the head onto the studs... was stop-leak.  :-\

I would machine the deck with the liners in it flat. Machine the head flat as well . Put a fel pro blue gasket on it and run the snott out of it.

Not trying to stirr no one up but honestly asking what brand of gasket uses the sleeve being up .002 to seal? I have used the victor renz and the fel- pro blue gaskets and both have a steel wound crush fire ring seal that measures 4.250 which catches the top ledge of the sleeves rather nicely .The reason I prefer the fel pro over the victor is the chance for water leaks around the pushrod holes .

yeah i just looked in my manual it said 2-4 anything over four would cause water seapage. I guess Ive been lucky seating them flush or milling them flush and letting the spiral wound metal fire ring be the crush seal like a flextallic gasket for instance.

Well, I'm thinkin' there's a deeper structural crack, that the crack in the deck is just a tip-of-iceburg, as the two middle sleeves CLEARLY aren't sitting in the bores very well- I can get a fingernail in the gaps pretty easy.

I'm gonna end up pulling this one apart to look at the structural consequence, and if I'm going through that trouble, I'm gonna change the block out of spite, but once I get it apart, I'll clean it out and look-see if there's any structural point of damage.  If I were to deck this thing, I'd still be pulling it out, and then jiggin' it up in the Cinci #3 (My BP's table travel isn't comfortably long enough)... so I'll let that go to some other day.  It's obvious, though, that when the studs get tension, the deck is distorting.  When I went through the torquing process, I could see leakage around the perimeter, and when I re-checked it, it started leaking worse, and the crankcase started turning milky-green.  I hate it when that happens.

Hi Mitch!

I believe you on the crack being common, and no doubt they do... er... 'season' a bit with the years... if the edges around the top of the sleeves looked stable, I'd consider planing it off, but regardless, the block would end up coming out and getting torn down... at that point, finding a different block would be the best plan, and once torn down for deeper inspection, I'd either find some other point of damage, and consider it condemned, or not, and consider it worthy of salvation.  If it was simply the crack, and I had it jigged up in the Cinci, I'd probably braze it up, then mill flat and restore the sleeve radius, but With that patch, I probably wouldn't mess with it.  I'm sure when I pull it apart, I'll find LOTS of stop-leak in there... probably enough to repackage and re-sell it...

Stop leak causes problems I wouldn't doubt that the pistons are also junk for the stop leak glued the rings to the lands so bad that to remove them will cause damage to the ring lands. I have seen blocks that have cracks running inside when the sleeves were removed that were within inches of the main bearings upper half that when  the mains was line bored and the sleeves were replaced and seated with the top sleeve lip to the blocks recessed lip decked flat and torqued the structural integrity served well . I also don't want to sound as if I am pushing you toward using the block cause if I was you and didn't feel warm and fuzzy I wouldn't use it either unless it was a absolute have to. I am just basically telling you what I have found fooling with the 226 engine and ways I have worked through them.  

Edited by mlpankey - 02 Jun 2010 at 6:27pm

Mitch, can the bores be offset left to right in order to go bigger without overlapping the liners?