Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

For years I have heard about sleeves dropping in Land Rover aluminum blocks and today a customer drops off a block for me to fix the dropped sleeve. He says he has had two head gasket replacements but is having a problem in cylinder number 5. I looked at cylinder number 5 and it does appear that it has a very slight line that I can barley see between the top of the liner and deck surface but the top of the liner is all chamfer so I am having trouble understanding how the head gasket can fail with no contact with the sleeve. I am also going to pressure check the heads and check them for warp.

machinedave wrote:For years I have heard about sleeves dropping in Land Rover aluminum blocks and today a customer drops off a block for me to fix the dropped sleeve. He says he has had two head gasket replacements but is having a problem in cylinder number 5. I looked at cylinder number 5 and it does appear that it has a very slight line that I can barley see between the top of the liner and deck surface but the top of the liner is all chamfer so I am having trouble understanding how the head gasket can fail with no contact with the sleeve. I am also going to pressure check the heads and check them for warp.

Hi Dave, there is one being done here now by a close friend, with two more waiting. It can be done with a Kwik-Way style boring fixture or a CNC. They will all be done here with the latter. The only issue I can't know is any preparation that may be needed behind the existing sleeves before installing the replacements, we'll see! I'm assuming the the sleeves will need to bored out (carefully) for the most part.

It is easily a 1000.00 job, with the replacement sleeves being stepped on the top the bores will need to be counter-bored! Not really difficult but time-consuming!

Thanks, Gary in N.Y.

P.S. I had the opportunity to get directly involved in this "operation" but decided to share it with my friend. I have too much to do at the moment to work with 24 sleeves.

Hi Gary. Thanks for the reply. I can bore the sleeve out and replace it no problem but I am just curious with the full chamfer at the very top how it is causing a head gasket leak. It appears to me that the head gasket has almost no contact at all with the sleeve due to the full chamfer.

The huge chamfer might be part of the problem. Does the gasket over hang the chamfer? Is there a fire ring on the gasket and if so, where does it seat?

A few years ago I attempted a 'redneck dyno' run (wheels off the ground, using the brakes to load the engine) on a just-rebuilt Rover-powered race car to check AFR. About two seconds into WOT there was water everywhere. 3 sleeves had shifted, two by only a couple of thous...

MadBill wrote:The huge chamfer might be part of the problem. Does the gasket over hang the chamfer? Is there a fire ring on the gasket and if so, where does it seat?

A few years ago I attempted a 'redneck dyno' run (wheels off the ground, using the brakes to load the engine) on a just-rebuilt Rover-powered race car to check AFR. About two seconds into WOT there was water everywhere. 3 sleeves had shifted, two by only a couple of thous...

All of the cylinders seem to have the same chamfer. At the top of the sleeve it appears to be only .010" thick due to the chamfer. The customer did not bring in the gasket. I measured the carbon deposit on the head with my caliper( I know its kind of crude) and placed it on the cylinder and it appears to stop exactly where the sleeve starts wich makes sense because even if the gasket over hanged the bore a little bit the extreme chamfer in the sleeve would not allow it to seal and allow carbon to be deposited. All of the other cylinders seem to have the same chamfer and none of them are higher or lower than the deck surface

I am wondering if the sleeve drop stories that I have always heard about were from a different style Land Rover V8 engine. This is like the old Buick 215 engine.

The Rover blocks I've sleeved all had a step in the bottom, the slipped sleeve syndrome is left over from the Buicks. These blocks crack in back of the sleeve just under the deck thickness and it leaks by the sleeve into the cylinder. It needs either a tophat sleeve of weld up the bore if installing a straight wall. Here's one I fixed recently with a tophat. 90% of Rover head gasket failures are cracked blocks. Did you notice how few and far between the coolant passages are?

> The Rover blocks I've sleeved all had a step in the bottom, the slipped sleeve syndrome is left over from the Buicks.

Buick (and Olds) 215 aluminum blocks were poured around ribbed sleeves. They never slip. The Rover V8 blocks are sand cast with pressed in liners (chilled sleeves inserted into warmed blocks) and can slip.

Dan Jones

Daniel Jones wrote:> The Rover blocks I've sleeved all had a step in the bottom, the slipped sleeve syndrome is left over from the Buicks.

Buick (and Olds) 215 aluminum blocks were poured around ribbed sleeves. They never slip. The Rover V8 blocks are sand cast with pressed in liners (chilled sleeves inserted into warmed blocks) and can slip.

Dan Jones

I can only speak from my experience with having sleeved several Rovers and yes, every one I've seen has press fit liners but they all have a step on one side in the bottom of the bore that would not allow the sleeve to drop, including the 2 in my shop right now. Maybe early on in production after buying it from GM they were not stepped but that's not been my experience. Maybe Dave will tell us if his block has a step.

Yes it does have a step in the bottom.

This blog implies the post-2000 blocks are the ones with the step at the bottom:

http://robisonservice.blogspot.com/2010 ... lures.html

Looks like the last Land Rover/Range Rover to use the Rover V8 was a 2004 model. Presumably the bulk of the Rover V8s don't have the step and have liners that can slip.

Dan Jones

MotionMachine wrote:. Did you notice how few and far between the coolant passages are?

Yes I did notice that.

Even with a bottom step, it's possible for a liner to not be fully pressed home, allowing it to sink under the combined effects of temperature and pressure...

MadBill wrote:Even with a bottom step, it's possible for a liner to not be fully pressed home, allowing it to sink under the combined effects of temperature and pressure...

There are 2 corners on the block and sleeve shoulder/step interface that must have radiuses or chamfered corners that can interfere if poorly formed. It is relatively easy for such an interference to prevent fully seating the components, and then sneakily dig in or "embed" over time.

Conversely, If the chamfer/radius is excessive and leaves too small an "abutment" then the contacting surfaces can embed as well.
http://hotrodenginetech.com/wp-content/ ... et_lg1.jpg

Daniel Jones wrote:This blog implies the post-2000 blocks are the ones with the step at the bottom:

http://robisonservice.blogspot.com/2010 ... lures.html

Looks like the last Land Rover/Range Rover to use the Rover V8 was a 2004 model. Presumably the bulk of the Rover V8s don't have the step and have liners that can slip.

Dan Jones

Great Information Dan. Thank you.