Originally Posted by zski128

Thanks RobinsonService for your reply. I have read all your blog posts many times over. Big fan

No Doubt, I hear you on the all metal gasket but I don’t think that will give you anymore protection from a sleeve moving than a composite one. Isn’t the fire ring on any gasket metal already? The later blocks have a step in them do the sleeve can’t go very far but I can see overtime it could potentially damage the fire ring.

Robinson Service, curious on your opinion on a few of questions
1. Do you think a flanged liner with o rings fitted at the bottom will prevent coolant from reaching the sump in the event of a crack in the cylinder wall?

The cylinder wall cracks develop at the bases of the head bolt threadings. We believe the reason blocks crack after head gasket replacement is that the torque is removed and reapplied and the cracks are the result.

The liners we use have o ring seals at the bottom to prevent coolant dripping into the sump. Since the liner is fixed in place by the top flange, the o ring sdoes not see movement and should hold tight for many years.

In addition, when we do blocks here, we weld any cracks we find so there are no cracks in new engines when they leave our shop. When we build engines we use studs, and the studs have a different depth of engagement than the bolts so the point of stress is in a slightly different place and we hope that reduces the chance go new cracks, but even it they occur, it should not matter




2. Have you seen a flanged liner fail allowing coolant/ combustion gases into the wrong places?

See above, as long as the head gasket has not blown out there is no way to get combustion gas into the coolant with a flange liner standing between,



3. Thoughts on using ARP head studs vs TTY bolts?

Yes, see above. We use studs for the reason of different engagement depth, and also because the bolt sold today are cheap Chinese made pieces and we just don't trust them like the older stuff. We see bolts that break on installation or fail to hold torque on new motors. That drove us to change.




I understand that overheating this engine will do a lot of damage. If I do rebuild one rest assured I will be replacing the all the cooling system components.