phunk

I havent really formed an opinion on wet sleeves in the VQ. For a long time I didnt think they were worth the risk of problems, since nobody was breaking cylinder walls open or running enough power to have issues. In 2003 I did build myself a sleeved block, AEBS did the sleeves and installation. That engine made it about a day or two after tuning to 670whp I think before it blew the headgaskets, but it also had the old m11x1.25 ARP2000 that failed everyone. So who knows which was the culprit, or maybe both. That was when I followed up with the 1/2" headstud build. After that I never really considered them again, and assumed that even if they did hold up for a while, they probably werent the right setup for a long life engine that someone wanted to see like 4+ years out of. I feel like you are setting yourself up with some individually very strong cylinders, but that they are floating around in a compromised chassis (block) that is tweaking and twisting and probably not going to be able to hold those sleeves stationary forever. But what do I know, maybe they are the answer. I would trust them more if they were 1 solid chunk per bank, so each cylinder is supporting its neighbors as they hand off cylinder wall side loads back and forth, but that would be a lot more expensive to produce. What I wanted to do with my wet sleeved VHR was do a half-fill to try and give them more support to the block and to one another. My machinist didnt think he could pour in the epoxy through the small holes in the wet sleeves well enough to do a nice even job.

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