Kraig, Dennis, Marlin and Charlie,
Thank you for the kind remarks. I wish I had more time to devote to rebuilding Kohler K-series engines, but a busy schedule and huge backlog of projects just doesn’t allow for it.
Kraig, your Kohler patiently awaits your arrival. Preserved in a plastic bag in my shop, it’s ready to be put to use. Come down anytime to pick up – just give me a day or two notice.
Frank Currier – thank you for the personal e-mail. I paged back through the Forum and saw the pictures of your K341 engine block and the damage to the bore. My thoughts on boring and sleeving these air-cooled engines is the following…if it were mine, I’d NEVER do it! As the other, knowledgeable engine guys on this forum have stated, removing parent bore material significantly weakens the cylinder structurally, especially in tension. This combined with the reduced heat transfer due to the interface between the sleeve and bore, are two strikes against doing it. In your particular failure, the missing chunk doesn’t bother me as much as that vertically displaced, hairline crack…NOT GOOD!
I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I’d consider this block scrap and instead of spending money on refurbishing it, I’d put it toward a good used block. Remember, this is what I would do if it were mine. Others have bored and sleeved these engines and have obtained satisfactory results. I would always be thinking about that potential impending failure though, which would be very sudden, unpleasant and costly.
Thank you for the kind remarks. I wish I had more time to devote to rebuilding Kohler K-series engines, but a busy schedule and huge backlog of projects just doesn’t allow for it.
Kraig, your Kohler patiently awaits your arrival. Preserved in a plastic bag in my shop, it’s ready to be put to use. Come down anytime to pick up – just give me a day or two notice.
Frank Currier – thank you for the personal e-mail. I paged back through the Forum and saw the pictures of your K341 engine block and the damage to the bore. My thoughts on boring and sleeving these air-cooled engines is the following…if it were mine, I’d NEVER do it! As the other, knowledgeable engine guys on this forum have stated, removing parent bore material significantly weakens the cylinder structurally, especially in tension. This combined with the reduced heat transfer due to the interface between the sleeve and bore, are two strikes against doing it. In your particular failure, the missing chunk doesn’t bother me as much as that vertically displaced, hairline crack…NOT GOOD!
I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I’d consider this block scrap and instead of spending money on refurbishing it, I’d put it toward a good used block. Remember, this is what I would do if it were mine. Others have bored and sleeved these engines and have obtained satisfactory results. I would always be thinking about that potential impending failure though, which would be very sudden, unpleasant and costly.
