Sleave removal

Their is a tool that you can use to drive the sleeves out of the bore with.It is best to have the crankshaft removed to insure that you don't damage the journals by striking them.you could have a maching shop fabricate one by turning a piece of round stock just a little larger than the bore of the cylinders.Firts turn a piece of stock of about 3/4" to about .020" smaller than the bore, then turn half of the blank to about .020" smaller than the bore of the sleeves.Cut about 3/4" from each side of the turned driver so that it will go into the bottom of the sleeve if the crankshaft is still in the engine and with a 10 or 12 lb hammer and a large drift against the tool drive them out the top of the cylinder. Or you can do it the hard way and fabricate a threaded thingy to straddle the top of the cylinder and use it to crank the sleeve out. Not recommended by me!

If it is the thin cast iron .040 sleeve the best way to remove them is to use a cutting torch or heating torch to heat a portion of the sleeve from top to bottom red hot and then allow to cool to room temperature and then the sleeve will almost fall out. This will not damage the cylinder wall as long as you don’t cut through the sleeve and heat the cylinder wall.

If you are a pretty good welder their is an easier way to get the old sleeves out. Lay the block on it's side and with a 6011 1/8" rod run a cold bead from the bottom of each sleeve to the top.Do this about 3 times in each sleeve and allow them to cool to the touch.You can then either pull them out with your hand or catch the bottom edge with a large screwdriver and tap them out. Be carefull not to weld through the old sleeve. After you get the old sleeves out lightly hone or sand the bore where the heat from the welding may have cooked the carbon to the bore slightly.Don't hone much. The new sleeves must have an interference fit.

Don't try to drive the new sleeves in with the tool that you fabricated to pull them out with as that tool will split the sleeves when you try to drive them back in.

You can take a piece of flat plate of at least 1/2" thick and that will completely cover the top of the new sleeve plus about 1" or so and drive the new sleeves down till they are even with the deck of the block.Some of these N guys will tell you to freeze the sleeves etc but it is not necessary.I have done literley hundreds and I quit that freezing bit years ago. Can't tell the difference.

You can use a Mig welder to run the three beads to shrink the old sleeves. Use the same settings you would to weld .090 steel. An ABS pipe plug is almost the right size to use as a poor man's driver to push the stubborn ones out once shrunk.

I tried freezing the sleeves. Visions of "they'll just drop in". I froze them for two days. Set up the block right next to the freezer. Had a block of wood and an 8 pound sledge.

Bad idea. While a 50 degree temperature difference should, in theory, be enough to eliminate the interference fit, in practice the heat transfer from the warm block to the cold sleeve is so effective that you only get an inch or two of "it just drops in" before the sleeve expands and hangs in the block. Then I tried to tap it down with the block of wood. This works until you get to .25 inch or so of the block, but by that point top of the sleeve had embedded itself in the wood and I couldn't drive it any more. I successfully resisted the (strong) temptation to tap on the top of the sleeve, "just a little bit", with the sledge hammer.

Then I went out and did what I should have done in the first place and bought a "Zane Whang"; a 6 inch x 6 inch piece of 1/2 inch steel plate. All the sleeves drove in fine; you have to hit them pretty hard but the plate spreads the force out evenly across the top of the sleeve.

Two additions to Zane's advice. Make sure you thoroughly clean out the counterbore that receives the flange at the top of the sleeve. Carbon or crud may cause the sleeve to hang up prior to going down the last .020 inch or so.

"Even with the deck of the block" is a bit subjective. There can come a point where the sleeve just doesn't seem to want to go down any more, but is still standing "proud" of the deck by .003 or so. The counterbore isn't quite deep enough to receive the flange, or maybe the block is a little bit warped.

Ford actually recommends that the block be deliberately machined this way when retrofitting an engine from thin sleeves to thick sleeves. I suppose the top of the sleeve acts as something of an O ring against the head gasket. So don't keep beating on the sleeve once it seems to be firmly seated, provided it's within .005 of the deck.

Regarding "oversized sleeves": my Dad let the maching shop talk him into using something like this on our 9n 40 years ago. Something about "more power". The sleeves didn't fit right, and one of them went up and down in the block with the piston. "Tick-a Tick-a Tick-a", as the sleeve hits the head, is a sound I will always associate with the N-series. We tried 3 or four times, over the years, to find a way to secure the sleeve to the block. I can still hear my Dad muttering "I should never have used those oversized sleeves..."

The standard sleeves have the advantage of a broad experience base, having been used in thousands of tractors. Some hot-rod sleeve, who knows?

The problem is that the sleeve bears on the head gasket, not the head. The head gasket is compressible enough (for the small surface area of the top of the sleeve) to allow .010 inch or more of unrestrained motion to develop. "Tick" as the sleeve moves up .010 and hits the indentation that has developed in the gasket. "Tick-a" as the sleeve moves down and hits the block.

This is one reason why the proper interference fit is so critical. If the sleeve can move, it will "work" at the head gasket, develop more and more motion (and the obnoxious sound), and may eventually crack the lip off the sleeve. At that point the sleeve will slide down into the spinning crankshaft, and much mechanical carnage will result.

I asked the guy who was going to do the work how he was going ta get em outta there (I assumed in a press)—he said, "Nah, I'll put em in the mill and cut em out. It just takes a couple of passes till the sleeve gets real thin, then they just shell out like paper."

Since you're replacing the sleeves I'd stick with standard size pistons. After installation the sleeves will need to be honed just a bit (to ensure roundness and correct size) but I wouldn't cut em oversize. Minimal HP increase. Wouldn't do it.

My block is still in the shop. Think I'm gonna let em do the assembly too. My "recent overhaul" that I recently bought has turned into a major overhaul job. Crank main journals were -.010+, rod journals .006+. The bearings did look new but whoever did the "overhaul" (if ya can call it that) installed the rod endcaps backwards. Sooooo, resizing the rods, new rod bushings, pistons, cutting the crank 10x20, new valves, guides—the whole nine yards. Guess I'll have a new engine when we get through ($1000+ later). The only thing we're reusing is the adjustable tappets (and we'll be checking them for flatness). Everything else that moves between the water pump and clutch is being replaced.

Oh well, it's only money.

Or maybe you are reusing the cam and didn't quite mean "everything that moves..."

On a low RPM engine with a modest cam profile and light valve spring pressures (like the 8n) this may not be all that critical but if you want to to it "right"...

In order to avoid rapid wear of the cam lobe and lifter, several things are done:
1) The lifter is heat treated. This creates and extra hard, but quite thin layer on the running surface.

2) The "flat tappet" isn't really flat. It has a very slightly spherical surface. This promotes, amoung other things, rotation of the lifter against the cam lobe. This in turn reduces the wear consequences of any slight imperfection of either surface. It also reduces the friction as the lobe begins to open the valve.

The cam lobe and lifter "get used" to each other after running in. If you switch them around, neither has the original starting surface, and must develop a fresh wear pattern against the defects in the other surface. This is said to result in rapid wear of the cam lobes.

I cringe in horror at the idea of "truing them flat and parallel". For case-hardened, spherical profile lifters, this is a terrible idea, as it would remove the heat treated surface area and also the sphericity so carefully designed into them.

All of this may be entirely moot on a 50 year old engine, with a mild cam and soft valve springs. Maybe they didn't even heat treat the lifters, or bother with the spherical surface. Maybe it is perfectly well accepted to "true" the lifters in these engines. I don't know for sure -- I was sticking to automotive "good practice".

Unless your lifters show obvious severe wear, in which case I'd just replace them, I would personally just put them back in any old order before I would do anything to their running surface.

This might be a good question for Zane...

The good news is that new cams and lifters are readily available, and the worst case of swapping lifters is that the cam wears out faster than the rest of the engine and you have to do the next rebuild a little sooner than otherwise.

If I admit to having a little "accident" and that I may have inadvertantly switched two of the lifters in my own rebuild, will that make you feel better?

I'll mention that to the machinist. His shop and machines are all spotless and he appears to be careful in his work—and all he does is engines. I understand what yur sayin. When we case hardened parts there wasn't much to the "case." All the precision tools had ta be ground/resized after coming back from the oven cause it always warped em a bit. I sorta thought that lifters and such like were made of a higher carbon tool steel and the whole thing got hard when ya cooked it, then they were ground to size. Maybe not?