Factory Sleeved Flatheads

cannondalerob

cannondalerob

Junior Member
Can anyone tell me why Ford sleeved motors in the factory in 1941? When rebuilding a factory sleeved motor, can you just pull the sleeves and hone that bore and be OK?
 
Dunno, but I have a mate with a 41 truck, and it is factory sleeved and he said it was when the bore wore out or got damaged,, the sleeves could be pulled out and the correct bigger pistons slotted straight back in ....

Maybe an ole wive\s tale.
 
You can pull the sleeves and use a piston of the correct size. However the correct size might be difficult to find. The idea of the sleeve is so it can be replaced. Sleeves were common practice in tractor engines and you can just keep replacing the sleeves and running them for forever! (well almost anyway)
 
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The idea was that the dealer could remove the sleeves and replace them in the chassis ---if just one cyl had damage just that one could be replaced, it was common to bore cyls in the chassis, that got a lot of metal in the bearings---sleeves solved that, they came pre finished, already honed, made it easy for the rebuild program, and better metal could be used for the sleeves---actually the sleeves were case hardened steel

they were also used in the rebuilding program, once the block got to or wouldn't clean up at .060 they could fit it for tin sleeves
 
Don't believe they (or any other manufacture) have an interest in building an engine to last 50 or 75 or more years. The customers don't want that and it just increases production cost.
 
Production costs and increased longevity are (I think) reasons why engines aren't sleeved routinely anymore. With electronic injection and better build tolerances, plus the engine benefits of emissions controls, we get engine life for multi-hundred thousand miles these days.

Back in the 1950s engine were maybe good for tens of thousands of miles, perhaps overhauled every year or so. A lot of those overhauls were ring and valve jobs and rod bearings. When's the last time you saw someone with a modern engine knurl pistons to get another round of wear on them? I last did that kind of stuff back in the early 70s. Of course, most of us are richer now and can afford new pistons. :)

Machine shops that can do the kind of work we need for our old cars may be a vanishing breed.

The truck engine shops may be the places for real rebuilds now. Can anyone fill us in on current truck practices?
 
They were not rebuild type sleeves ordered by size...they were pre-sized Ford replacement parts, of course in proper sizes for 60, 85, and 95. They had a small step at top matching a groove in the block for automatic depth setting, and installation was accomplished by simply collapsing the old sleeve and pulling in the new one with special but very simple puller that came with inserts for 60, 85, and 95 engines. That inserter was a big slug designed to keep the very thin sleeves from distorting under the insertion load. Instant overhaul. They were used in production together with normal iron bore engines, making up a fairly large but unknown to me percentage of builds. Rings and pistons were peculiar to iron or sleeve bores, and the sleeve setup was prefinished and did not need honing or boring.
 
The sleeved motors that I had experience with were dry sleeves, pressed in with no rim at the top. The engine shop that did mine said they were used in factory engines that had cracked blocks when they were cast. They sleeved them to save the block. I had a 48 that had one sleeved cyl. and a 51 that had three sleeves. He may have been right. Al
 
When I was a kid just discovering Flatheads I had a machine shop operator tell me that he removed the sleeves and that there was a Ford tractor piston that was the correct size?
 
In my youth, I passes on a number of blocks that were factory sleeved. The ones I found, were all truck blocks with the factory reliefs. Not sure why I passed on them, but I did. I guess in the commercial application, sleeving makes sense. It can be taken out quickly and replaced just as easily and the truck can get back into service faster.

That's my two cents.

Not flathead related, but I believe a fair number of foreign engines (mostly 4 cly.) are still wet sleeved. Due to the use of aluminum blocks, but it does make rebuilding one these a little easier. Most of these engines have some type of forced induction as well.

These types of wet sleeves are usually thick and actually help with block integrity like the Miller & Offy engines of yore.
 
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If a guy wants a bigger bore, you have to take them out. If a guy want's longevity and doesn't care about having a standard bore, you replaced the sleeves & pistons. All the little 9N, 2N, & 8N plus the 600, 800, & 900 series tractors used sleeves. I think that's why you still see so many of them still working out there. You can still get pistons & sleeves easily but engine blocks, not so much.
 
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