jmac wrote:
It depends on where you are from, in some places, wet sleeves is only used to describe engines where the sleeves are the only things in there, there's _zero_ block around them. Even going a very big bore on an A-series, you'll still have some meat around the sleeve somewhere.

On engines with wet sleeves, they can tend to 'want' to move around a little, so it puts more strain on the head gasket. They can also 'sink' a little bit over time so the head gasket doesn't hold out that long. One of the engines in particular comes to mind - the volvo/renault/peugeot collaboration called the PRV v6. It was a v6, and to say the least they had some issues. They had massive issues early on with fuel distribution blocks (mech injected) and they went as far as to redesign the intake to allow better access (by which time that issue was sorted, so now the 'new' intake made it a damn hard job to change plugs - and without the right soft jaw specially shaped pliers it was almost impossible to remove the plug leads from over the plugs without breaking one or two. It was still difficult even _with_ the right tool.

But their biggest headache (tehy also had rockers which wore through the friction surface hardening, openign up clearance and eventually to the point the valves wouldn't open much, and it wouldn't run) was the wet liners. they'd 'settle' down in teh block and stop sealing well, and even if you replaced the head gasket, they just didn't have enough clamping there. To do it 'right' you literally had to strip the motor and fit thicker shims under the sleeves then re-build. I remember doing a hell of a lot of warranty changeover work as an apprentice (worked at a place that did volvos and other high end luxury Euro stuff).

If it's NA and that's what it takes to get massive capacity then for sure go for it, but I'd personally be worried about its use for boosted stuff.

I haven't seen it in person but I have read about guys using ford cleveland v8s in the early days of pro-stock where big and small blocks were used. The cleveland is best described as 'heads by enzo ferrari, bottom end by an accountant' by many people. Basically the bores were thinner than ideal even for NA work with enough power levels (adn to that end apparently the Australian cast/made blocks are the best of the std factory blocks) anyway - they'd do a similar thing - cut the bores to a certain oversize, big enough for the sleeves (and there'd be some material to anchor them to). then heat the block, and drop in sleeves chilled in dry ice, but coated with a sort of bronz, then put then in a big 'oven' and raise the temp to the point it'd sweat the bronze and seal it all up.

On some hondas - with big outputs - they do a thing called 'posting' the block (they are more or less an open deck sleeve setup). this is where they drill holes in the outside of the block in-line with each cylinder, then tap the holes and screw in alloy (usually alloy, soft tipped at any rate) 'bolts' till they just touch the outside wall of the bore and very light tension. It doesn't sound like much but it helps stabilise the sleeve against side/thrust loads when the rods are at severe angles. I don't think the A-series requires it as is, but if you start chasing wet sleeves, it might eventually be necessary to post the a-series blocks.

D wrote:
Initially I suggested 77mm for stock block a14/15
but since Lemonhead mentioned the wetsleeve setup
Im excited to see someone else thought of wetsleeving
besides me years ago.
This week all engines are 50% off at pick-a-tart
so Ill be in there to get some sleeves and pistons
from a frog engine.

rockstardan wrote:
are them pistons custom made or out of somthing else?

ddgonzal wrote:
Custom made pistons are about $100 USD each. See Pistons

nick_m wrote:
When I was over in oz last I saw shell had a ethanol blended 100 octane (RON) Even rang Shell when I got home to check they weren't supplying it here (or going too)
seems every one gets better fuel than us Bart!

A14force wrote:
99 octane?!!!! Holy hell, I though 98 ultimate was a good thing. Is your fuel rated by it's MON, RON, or AKI number?

jmac wrote:
I can't say 100% for sure, but personally I'd be worried about 79mm and more boost - enough to get you the 280bhp goal. Is there any chance you could sell them to somebody with a NA datsun engine project that is high revving/output. I'd honestly personally prefer going 76.5 or 77mm if absolutely no option. If you can tune it very safe, rich under boost and not too much timing (richer than you would go for another turbo setup with the same boost but stronger bore walls), water injection, then it's probably doable, but not ideal.

NO engine in the world will stand up too long with detonation (or preignition, which is usually actually worse, esp in a boosted setup, due to the sheer amount of air/fuel to be burning too early (as the piston is still rising in the bore, which causes the burn temperature to go through the roof. Generally there's a small gap between the piston top and where the flame actually reaches (it's only a few thou) so it protects the piston crown a little. (it's why tight quench helps prevent detonation - flame can't pass through the small gap - it's why some old kerosene home heaters have a wire mesh over the flame to stop it reaching any higher).. Anyway, if you experience any severe shocks (detonation) or just massive pressure (more related to pre-ignition) then it can compromise that layer, and the heat the piston is exposed to is higher still.

SO obviously - no engine will handle det/pre-ign for long at all (and every little tiny bit of damage just stacks up on top of each other) - but even if you avoid that, it might still be pushing it.

Don't get me wrong, the datto engine is darn strong, esp for when it was made. And it's a smaller engine and 2 valve/pushrod valvetrain. Effectively a turbo would have to work harder to produce 280bhp out of an a15 than it would out of an sr20 (esp since it could do it at less boost, so less heating up of the intake charge. So that means (usually) more heat in the intake charge, but you also lose a little more power to exhaust pumping losses, and the pumping losses scenario leads to more heat trapped/lingering between the exhaust valve and the turbo exhaust housing, so more heat the exhaust valve has to deal with. It sort of goes around in circles, with these issues all affecting each other.

Sometimes you have a 'win' here and there with boosted projects. For example - supercharged setups - if you mounted a blower on a bench, and then spun it with an electric motor (and a restrictor on the blower outlet that is adjustable, you could spin it to any rpm you liked, and then adjust the outlet restrictor size until the supercharger is making X amount of boost (lets say 10psi). Now you could calculate how much power was required by the electric motor to achieve that. So then you could work out how much power the supercharger is stealing in order to produce 10psi at (for example) 6000rpm. And you'd have the answer. Except it wouldn't be the real answer. Here is where things get interesting - essentially that 'force' of pressurised air being shoved into the cylinder - well it actually creates some 'push' on the piston going down in the bore. So 'some' of the superchargers energy cost is actually paid back. The difference isn't like night and day, but it's one of those weird ones that hardly anyone might think about (and for the record, I didn't come up with this myself, it was a result of a discussion on the jyturbo list, where one of the posters there was - no kidding - a rocket scientist)

What is the situation in Koskela with available fuel and octane ratings? Recently in Aus we've been seeing the introduction of ethanol blended into petrol (which increases fuel consumption, and isn't profitable/viable without government subsidies or brazil where wages are lower on average,so there's a cheap workforce) - anyway they do it because of 'climate change' - basically to get votes).. OK so the regulr unleaded is being phased out to be replaced with e10 - 10% ethanol.

That's bad, but on the flip side, there's also (in probably 20-30 places around the country, but growing slowly) e85 - which is 85% ehtanol and the rest regular fuel. It doesn't require as much fuel as methanol does, but it has a _lot_ of the same sort of cooling effect that methanol does. So effectively you have to increase flow by about 40% or so (vs 100% or more for methanol) - which increases fuel consumption even at part throttle. It's still reasonable enough that a car can be street driven with a fuel like E85 (methanol goes beyond that0 but you'll get the chance to run more boost safely (or the same boost but maybe not needing water injection or a bigger intercooler)

People here are using E85 in various racing categories, and the power it makes is higher than when they previously ran on special high octane petroleum/gasoline based race fuel - and it only takes them literally the first few corners of the start of the next race to se just how big the improvements are. If you can get something like that fuel, certainly it'd be a good option

If