Cylinder Liner

[Steve Roberts]

Can anyone help? I have an Elan +2 with an engine which looks to be numbered LP11318LBA, there is a casting number E6015. The engine is fitted with +40 thou pistons however one of the cylinders is fitted with a liner. My local engineering company who I have asked to resleeve all the cylinders back to standard bore do not want to machine the old liner out without knowing its O/D? Was there a standard liner size used by Lotus to reclaim duff castings ( I assume that is why the liner is fitted). If I dont have the liner removed could the four cylinders be overbored to +60thou?

[gjz30075]

I really doubt you can go to .060 over. In fact, I'm surprised its at .040 over. Maybe if its an LA block, it could. The letters LA are stamped in the block's front face, upper left hand corner.

Couldn't the liner's OD be measured from below, down in the crank area? I don't know if Lotus supplied liners, to actually answer your question. You might want to check with a reputable Lotus vendor that gets into machining.

Greg Z.

[type26owner]

3-7/16" OD sleeve was typical. Just replaced a factory installed sleeve in my engine which was that size.

Here's a heads up. Look for other problems with the block that got FIXED. :angry: Mine had a custom sized bearing fitted to the center bearing of the old pushrod camshaft. The engine had been kludged together poorly.

[rgh0]

Steve

Unless you have owned the car from new and know its total rebuild history I would not assume any liner was put in by Lotus or Ford to reclaim a casting. This would be very much the exception, if it happened at all, as the cost of a new production casting would have been less than the cost of the special handling and machining to recover a bad one.

However any competent engine maching place should be able to remove and replace a liner of unknown thickness with careful machining. Easier if they know but not impossible if they do not.

Almost any "L" block, which your car should have, will go 40 thou oversize many will go 60 thou over but finding a 84 mm piston is not as easy as finding a standard 82.5mm or 83.5mm set of pistons. Your machine shop should be able to do an ultrasonic check to determine wall thickness and how big an overbore they can do. If they have a good ultrasonic tester they should also be able to measure the liner thickness by detecting the join between the two layers.

regards
Rohan

[garyeanderson]

Dave Bean lists a 84mm piston in both stock pin height (1.53 ch) and the pin height raised (1.46 ch) for the 1600 crank (1720cc). not cheap though they are nearly $800 a set and are made for them by J.E. pistons.

<a href='http://www.davebean.com/specials1.htm#Pistons' target='_blank'>http://www.davebean.com/specials1.htm#Pistons</a>

Gary