Originally Posted by PHiZ
Meh, I don't forsee sleeves ever rocking below some outrageous HP number, on the order of 600+ hp. For a street car I would go open deck all the way. The cooling characteristics, and the free reign for the entire sleeve to thermally expand will lead to a long happy street life.
If you want to run a closed deck sleeve for a drag monster, I think that is fine too. But the sleeves will have the ability to expand at the middle of the cylinder (where sidewall loading is at it's greatest), and will be pinched at the top.
-PHiZ
You keep going with that theory, I'm sure your vast engine building experiences are helping you out there
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There are plenty of blown headgaskets on turbo setups that are so far away from your magic 600 mark that it actually makes me laugh that you think stock sleeve design is infallible until "some outrageous HP number". There are 2 things that cause blown headgaskets, and they are detonation, and cylinder walk. The former more than the latter, but cylinder walk can/does play a role on hondas above 250-300 WHP.
Also, honda block designs mean that the sleeves are quite well supported along their entire length. If you get a sleeve to bulge in the middle, it's because you have a piston/rod sticking through it, side loading wears on the piston as much or more than it wears on the cylinder. Also, to say that a sleeve would "be pinched at the top" because of a closed-deck design would be ignoring the fact that the top of the sleeve is not exempt from the thermal expansion of the rest of the engine.
A proper cooling system [higher capacity radiator, more efficient fans, etc.] for the application will also negate any shortcomings a turbo honda would experience with an otherwise stock cooling system. Just because there seems to be less area for coolant to flow, doesn't mean it can't do as good a job, it just means other shortcomings of the cooling system are exposed.