What year 360?
.....I'd try to sleeve all 8 cylinders for better ring seal and not worry about the rest of the engine breaking up...
Bill,
As much as I understand your theory, it has more inherent problems than fixes.
Cut and dried, the strength of the block is in the cylinders, as much as the ring seal is dependent on the cylinder's thickness and resistance to flex.
Most sleeves remove at least 1/2 the thickness of a stock block's cylinders, which also means you lose the strength of the cylinders that tie the deck and the lower pan rails together.
By boring out the stationary, fixed material of the cylinder and replacing it with a more or less floating mass, you have weakened probably one of the MOST critical areas of a smallblock Mopar, the block's deck.
You've decreased the cylinder's load capacity by half and, in some instances you anticipate further loading of the deck by installing studs, or better bolts.
Though the bolt holes on a small block do generally go straight to water, they are very close to the cylinders (as on most ANY stock block), which loads the cylinder with pulling stresses.
With only 4 bolts per cylinder to load the head gaskets, already a big handicap for stock block small Mopars, removing ANY extra material related to the deck or cylinders is tantamount to asking for trouble.
Don't get me wrong, sleeving is an excellent option, especially if it's properly done by cutting a step in the bottom of the bore to prevent downward slippage, but it's for the poor (to save a rare original block economically), or for the really rich (Big inch aluminum blocks with huge deck thicknesses), it seldom works as a quick fix for performance issues.
Most small block Mopar aftermarket blocks weren't designed with thicker decks and cylinders with heating issues in mind, but rather for strength, both in the deck and the cylinder.
Why? It's all about sealing.
It's why the only stock 360 block worth using ends in '496.
Mark.
