Keeping all your machinery in the best condition is essential for keeping your business operating consistently and smoothly. Of course, even the highest quality machinery will degrade over time, but effective maintenance can limit that degradation to minimal levels and ensure your machinery lasts much longer.

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Over time, even with regular maintenance, large generator engines and compressors can suffer extreme wear to their upper and lower liner landing seal areas. This can require extremely expensive replacement of a major component and even more costly downtime for your business.

Cylinder blocks and the upper and lower liner landing seal areas can be damaged by engine failure, severe wear or fretting corrosion. All are problems that need addressing before you can begin using the machinery again. An expert repair service can offer a cost-effective solution to getting your equipment back in working order.

What is a Cylinder Liner?

A cylinder liner is essentially a cylinder fitted to the engine block; it becomes an integral part of its operation. Essentially, they are the interior metal protection from the wear and tear of the motor. Additionally, they will protect it from heat and impurities but in different ways depending on their design. They are known to have three functions (depending on your design) within the engine.

Firstly, they form the sliding surface. The liner tightly holds when the associated valve is seated. This prevents compressed or combustion gas from leaking into the manifold from between the valve and valve seat. They offer a high burn resistance with a low self-friction or with the piston ring. Additionally, they have a low lubricating oil consumption.

Secondly, they have excellent heat conduction. Conducting the internal combustion heat out through the liner reduces the friction of both the valve and cylinder head simultaneously.

Thirdly, they help keep airtightness. By maintaining an utterly airtight seal, the liner prevents internal combustion and compresses gas from escaping and reducing the engine's efficiency. In addition, the liner shouldn't be prone to deformation due to the temperature and pressure being so high internally.

How Is A Sleeve Different?

There isn't a difference, it's an interchangeable name, and different countries adopt one or the other. But there are different types to choose from during a cylinder sleeve replacement.

Dry cylinder liners are a more basic design but highly practical. This design must withstand the previously mentioned high temperatures and guard the piston interior against impurities. It achieves this thanks to its very close fit within the jacket in the cylinder block will. Dry liners are usually comparatively thinner than wet ones due to their more basic design.

Wet cylinder liners will protect your piston in a slightly different way. These liners will interact with the coolant, hence the name. In addition, some wet cylinder liners will help disperse heat and impurities when fitted with tiny openings.

Finned cylinder liners are designed for air-cooled engines. They are made of the same impurity and heat resistant metals as the dry cylinder liner and work much the same way. However, the finned cylinder liner is fitted with tiny fans, which increase the force of the inflowing air and increase cooling efficiency.

Potential Collateral Damage

If a cylinder leaks water into the crank bays, it will cause damage to the crankshaft and mating parts. If this were to happen, In-Situ's experience with crankshafts makes us ideally placed to help with any associated crankshaft repairs.

We offer a metal stitching service if any broken parts or fractures occur in these seal areas. Our skilled engineers have successfully employed this advanced stitching system to fix any of these problems. When combined with a make-up sleeve insertion procedure, metal stitching has proven invaluable as a durable yet cost-effective repair solution to OEMs as well as equipment owners

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How We Can Repair Cylinder Blocks

During our last two decades, we at In-Situ have perfected our way of designing and developing a specialised boring and facing system to allow the asset owners a more cost-effective alternative to replacing the worn components.

Over the last 20 years, we have developed the expertise to repair the damaged areas of the cylinder blocks successfully. As a result, we are confident that we can reinstate the damage to the upper and lower landing seal areas, damage usually caused by the problems mentioned earlier, to leave your asset good as new thanks to our mobile on-site machining equipment.

On-Site Machining Services

We offer multiple repair options for all engine types to ensure that we can get your business up and running again. We provide make-up sleeves and rings inserted with interference fits, thermal spraying and selective plating. Choosing In-Situ means you can have peace of mind that your maintenance needs are adequately covered without having to worry about any expensive engine block replacement.

To learn more about our Liner Landing machining and the other on-site machining services we provide, check out our various services. If you have any questions about the services we recommend filling in an enquiry form or calling us during business hours at and one of our engineers will answer your questions.

Shop Talk: Cylinder Liner Protrusion Installation Tips

Question from Hank in Texas: What's the Mack E-7 Engine installation procedure for cylinder sleeves and setting the liner protrusion?

Answer: Excellent question Hank. Three things to consider when looking at the cylinder liner sleeve installation process for the Mack E-7 reman:

Liner protrusion is the measurement the cylinder liner extends above the surface of the engine block. It is supposed to stick above the surface of the block and act essentially as a cushion on the cylinder head gasket. Once torqued into place the cylinder head crushes the gasket evenly and to the correct OEM specifications. In essence the cylinder liner is a guide to make sure the cylinder head and block are in proper alignment. Measurements are taken using a bridge micrometer and a dial indicator.

1. First you should seal the cylinder liner sleeves with vendor supplied RTV silicone adhesive sealant.

2. Secondly, take the calipers and take a measurement in between the fire dam and the coining bead from the deck height. The measurement should fall between 0.023-0.029" in. The tolerance should not exceed .007" in. If the tolerance is over spec the rebuilder should use shims to compensate. The engine rebuilder should measure 5-6 times around the head to make sure it is in spec. Measuring once is simply not enough; consistency is the name of the game. If the fit is not 100% perfect the head gasket might be crushing or sealing properly on one side of the engine and not sealing correctly on the other.

3. Pro Tip of the Day: #2 and #5 camshaft main bearing should feed the rocker shaft. It is absolutely critical that the the camshaft bearing holes should align during installation. If the holes do not align the oil can't freely flow from the bearings and engine will seize up.

4. Dry liners are a bit trickier than wet liners. You should use a depth micrometer to first measure the depth of the counterbore; which consists of the distance from the deck surface to the flange surface in the engine block. Once that measurement is taken you then want to measure the thickness of the liner flange. Subtract the first measurement from the second measurement which will give you the ideal protrusion specification if the liner sits true in the block. The main reason for taking these measurements (which is not necessary when applying wet liners) is that you have to use a sleeve installer tool. Once installed, it is difficult to remove them and reset so you better make sure your protrusion heights are correct the first time. After installation it is wise to take measurements again to confirm the specifications are correct.

5. Not having the proper seal between the head and block can result in catastrophic engine failure. The most common problems from incorrect liner protrusion are leaky head gaskets, damaged pistons, pitted cylinder head decks and cracked liner flanges. Take a look at the photos, under magnification, of correct and incorrect liner protrusion.

Normal Liner Protrusion:

Normal liner protrusion under high intensity magnification. Notice the even consistency of the cylinder liner flange.

Incorrect Liner Protrusion: 

Notice the inconsistent pattern in the cylinder liner flange. The pattern is uneven towards the bottom of the picture. This particular liner protrusion is out of spec and resulted in a cracked liner flange.

Trapped Debris:

The photo above shows the presence of foreign debris between the sealed liner. This particular block was salvaged and shot peened. Shot peening is the process of cleaning with compressed air containing very fine particles. A material analysis found that very small particles were embedded into the surface of the block. The block was not steamed or chemical cleaned in a tank to remove the debris before setting the liner protrusion. When the cylinder liners were installed the debris was trapped under the flange which resulted in a cracked liner flange. When building a diesel engine it is dubiously important to keep everything clean. Any foreign debris from dirt, sand or steel particles can contaminate the internal components of the engine.

Improper Machining: 

This picture shows heavy linear marks across the surface of the block. These striations patters were caused from aggressive machining of the surface of the block from a high speed abrasive surfacing disc. The surface was not evenly polished after machining. The cross thatch lines are from the flange itself causing an opposite pattern on top of the machined block. The result is an uneven fit and in this case the flange completely snapped from the liner.

The proper liner protrusion can be a bit tricky but making sure you get it completely in spec is extremely important. Take it step by step and you'll be just fine!

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