Thread: 440 sleeve in 454?

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Hey all! I have the opportunity to buy a 454 block, but it has a sleeve in it. It is a 440 sleeve,and the guy told me he had it put in because he wanted it .040 over, and a 440 bore is close to the 4.290, .040 bore, therefore he would only have to take like .001 off or something like that. Have any of you heard of this before, or done it yourselves? As I have said before, I want to make about 500h/p, from the motor, so I need to know it will handle it. He said the sleeve wall is still about 1/8" thick. It is a 2 bolt, and is nothing but a block. He is asking $350, worth it? Thanks for any and all help.

Sounds like, a peice of scrap iron too me. His word may be trustworthy to some, but there is a chance that the cylenders may have been mangled from a blow up, he sleeved it so he could sell it, kinda makes you wonder when it has a compleatly wrong sleave in it ( diffrent manufacture even ). If ya really want it, offer him a couple hundred, if he's despirate to get rid of it, he'll take it.

I'd look for another block.

You get what you pay for.

If it sounds to good to be true, it probably isn't true.

Trouble is, BBC blocks are getting harder and harder to find. A friend of mine finally bought a new block from Chevy after looking everywhere for a used production block for his rear engine dragster.

Personally, I wouldn't turn down a tall deck block if the price was right. There should be a few of those out there with virgin bores. I also don't see anything wrong with using spacer plates so you can use short deck manifolds, but hey, that's just me.

you have to do what you think is right, but there is nothing wrong with sleeved block if its done right. i have run them in round track cars at 6500 rpm's all night long. the reason the block had to be sleeved was because the cylender was cracked and it was either throw the block away or sleeve it and the sleeved motor lasted a lot longer than the original motor did.

sleeved it is. I have never ran one with a sleeve so I don't know.

there is nothing wrong with a sleeve as long as it was put in rigth . the way i like to see them put in so that it s bore out all most to the bottom so the sleeve is butted to the bottom of the old bore is keeps it from moving this is the best way this is the way i put sleeves in.i did a big block last moth and I use a 4.500 i like thick sleeves and bored it to 0.60 over and deck it .when done it is hard to fine the sleeves a lot of guys call this buring the sleeve .and is far as it being two bolt it will be fine for 500 hp $350 is not bad if it has been mag hot tank bored and sleeved. i like to get $100 for one hole sleeved with a sleeve

I POPPED A VALVE HEAD OFF DOWN INTO CYLINDER ON ONE OF MY 454'S THAT HAD ABOUT 2000MI ON THE REBUILD, DIDN'T WANT TO SCRAP IT SO I HAD IT SLEEVED, BUT NOT WITH A 440 SLEEVE. BUT MINE HELD FINE NO PROBLEMS RAN IT HARD. THE QUESTION I WOULD ASK IS IF THIS FELLOW HAS ANOTHER 454 THAT HE IS RUNNING AND WHY DOES HE ONLY JUST HAVE THE BARE BLOCK WITH A SLEEVE?

lt1s10" .....there is nothing wrong with sleeved block if its done right....."


pat mccarthy ".....there is nothing wrong with a sleeve as long as it was put in rigth......"

The key being properly installed. I have also build a couple of motors with a sleeve and their longevity is just as good as a non-sleeved motor. Any good machine shop should be able to do this with no problems. A shop that does slip shod work on their other maching will likely screw this up too.

As far as the sleeve being a "440" sleeve.....sleeves are all built by the aftermarket. For ease of looking up the proper one they are listed by application. It doesn't matters what he catalog says the application is as long as the demenisions are correct for the application.

Most sleeves sold for a particular application are in standard bore size. Now think this through, if he had put in the sleeve listed for the engine, his next step would be to bore it .040 (actually probably to around .037-8, and then final honed it to it's eventual size. Besides the cost of an additional machining step, the new sleeve is now .040 thinner than it started out as. The route that was taken with the "440" sleeve ends up retaining most of the original sleeve thickness and only requires a final honing to bring it to the final bore size.

Going this route, he saved the cost of boring the sleeeve AND ends up with a thicker one to boot.

Me, I'd say GO FOR IT if the quality of the machine work looks good.

I pulled my engine to find it was .060 over already. I wanted to sleeve all 8 cylinders but that was too pricey and most machine shops laughed at me. Most of the engines I work on are sleeved and they typically run 25000+ hours between overhauls. Even then the sleeves aren't necessarily replaced, just honed. The truth is that a sleeve can be made of materials with better wearing properties than the block and because the entire block doesn't have to be cast of that material, it saves the manufacturer a lot of money. It is also nice that if a cylinder is damaged, the sleeve can be removed and replaced. Most of these engines are stationary mounted and too large to be brought to a machine shop to have a cylinder bored.

I am in favor of sleeves.