[Casperdude898]

i melted a piston on my 350 bored 60 i cleaned up the metal on the cylinder wall that the piston left behind and found a chip out of the wall should i sleeve the cylinder or would it bother anything to let it go i can show pics if i need to and if sleeved would it hold up to a mild street strip build?

[cobalt327]

Might help to show a picture of it, but if it's anything more than just a tiny nick, you might need to either sleeve it or bore 'em all.

But sleeving- if done correctly- will hold up just fine, IMHO.

I won't tell you about the time I honed a 273 cylinder and used just ONE forged slug...

[Casperdude898]

[techinspector1]

I have put grocery-getters together that looked worse than that when I was strapped for money, but I wouldn't do it with a street/strip motor that I was intending to make some power with. Sleeve it would be my opinion.

[Casperdude898]

im shootin for at least 400 horse using a edelbrock performer rpm cam and intake, flat tops, and not sure what heads yet but wats the worst that could happen if i just went without sleeving it

[techinspector1]

Never having experienced a 400 hp motor with a chink that close to the top ring, I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't think anything good would come of it. The ones I slapped together had rust craters farther down in the bore. Maybe fire punching around the top ring at TDC could burn it larger or maybe through to the water jacket. I'm just guessing, I don't know. Maybe one of the more experienced builders who has encountered this sort of problem will weigh in with an intelligent answer.

[racecar100]

We sleeved several 700+ Hp race engines and never had any problem....

[DaSouthWon]

Originally Posted by techinspector1

I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't think anything good would come of it.

LOL, are you sure? My crystal ball sees a burnt compression ring in the near future.

[ericnova72]

At .060" over sleeving isn't an option for you either because putting the sleeve in distorts the cylinders on either side of the sleeved hole. You can't sleeve a hole in a performance engine and stay at the same overbore, you have to go bigger and you don't have any room left. Example, you sleeve a hole in a .030" over block, then all holes have to go to .040 or bigger to remove the distortion caused be pressing in the sleeve. If this was just a grocery getter/stocker you could do it and it would be mildly acceptable, but not a performance engine.

Looks like you are going to be machining another block if you want it right.

What caused the meltdown in the first place? Something has to be really wrong to totally spray melt a piston, did you get greedy with nitrous?

[DoubleVision]

I agree. Find another block. Keep that block for a stocker build. In a high power situation, the top ring would stop right around that area, the flame would go past that section of the ring, when the piston traveled down the heat would be trapped inbetween the top and middle rings resulting in cooking the second ring, as it`s more of a oil scraper ring and isn`t made to take the heat the top ring does. In stock engines I`ve built them where they looked worse than that and didn`t have any issues, but I wouldn`t attempt it for a performance build.

[alittle1]

What does your local machine shop say, the one that would do the sleeving?

They're the one's that have to make you happy. We can only offer you our past experience as related to problems we encountered.

[cobalt327]

Sorta OT, but way back, guys running drag flattys used to go all the way into the jackets then sleeve. Then fill the jackets with "cement".

Not for the faint of heart, or the street, or even racing, these days. Just no need what with all the aftermarket blocks.

[a67tempest455]

In my opinion a 350 isn't worth the cost of sleeving. it would probably cost more to sleeve it than a diffrent junkyard block would. I would only sleeve an expensive or hard to find block. And yes that "nick" will be a problem, burn't rings and loss of compression will be the result if you try and run it like that.