Umm... thickness is a moot point. They need to be bored to fit the piston and you have to have the stock cylinder in good working order to reinforce the sleeves.

Do you have any foundation for your claim that Darton is the best? Proof?

Thanks PHiZ and david for the info. I'll read up on those articles. I'll be watching you for that sedan comment PHiZ.

 

First off, boost doesn't break sleeves, detonation does. It's that sudden stress of the piston on the cylinder wall that will bust one open, so saying a sleeve will survive to 55psi means exactly squat.

Second, the only way for sleeves to be effective is proper installation. Unless you have a machinist that you trust with your money more than you trust yourself, have the company you're buying your sleeves from do the job.

Lastly, if it were my choice I would probably go with Darton. Seems to work well for Speed Phreak.
http://linus.highpoint.edu/~hleach/c...lock%20top.jpg
http://linus.highpoint.edu/~hleach/c...ine%20side.jpg

 

But I'm a dealer for AEBS and I get a bitchin' price. :sad:

 

It's your money, I'm just saying Steven doesn't trust just any ole company. Perhaps you don't realize exactly what turbo that is hanging off the front of his LS :drunk:

 

I like the darton design, but It seems like it would be much worse for cooling capacity, since the coolant passages are just a few little holes around each cyl. Whereas with aebs/GE most of the passage is open, with only the reinforcements blocking the coolant path. I haven't heard of any darton overheating problems though (aside from during break-in), and if its only a minor problem, you could always just run a higher water:antifreeze ratio. :dunno:

 

With a good radiator and high efficiency fan [not a stock POS], this really isn't an issue.

 

Darton has both open deck and closed deck sleeves, closed deck is only really neccesary to keep the sleeves from shifting at like 600+ HP from what I hear.

Also, I just read an article by someone who seemed to really like the quality of AEBS sleeves, it's just that there is a huge benson bandwagon right now, so that's what I mainly hear about.
-PHiZ

 

If you're going to the trouble of building a high output forced induction engine, putting in open deck sleeves [which are really just replacements for the stock stuff] is about the dumbest thing you can do. I don't know of any engine builder, myself included, that would feel comfortable doubling or even building triple the power on stock type sleeves on any engine seeing street use.

I know there are people making 400+ HP on stock blocks, although not for long at those levels. A closed deck style sleeve helps incorporate the entire block into the strength of the sleeves, and I wouldn't want the tops of the cylinders having any chance of moving around on any I-4 engine making more than 250 HP. At those power levels, even without detonation, you run the risk of getting such high peak cylinder pressures that you can actually unseat the cylinder from the headgasket, blow it, and then quench the cylinder's interior with coolant, which is what does the most damage.

I would rather be conservative than try to attach a power figure on a turbo build-up for various stages of "necessity".

 

where can u purchase Darton sleeved blocks??

 

I PMd boostfed on HT and here was his response:

Boostfed (4:14 PM 2/12/2004): AEBS has nothing but good ish! Never heard a bad thing bout them! I havde Darton sleeves the first gen which are the exact same as the AEBS T sleeves but Darton had to change it since AEBS patented the design.

This is exactly what AEBS told me. So, I wonder if Darton still makes sleeves as good as AEBS now that they can't have identical ones. h: