This Foley Tech Tip, one of a series that we publish, discusses methods we have developed in our remanufacturing center for saving worn Continental and Wisconsin block castings. These methods include sleeving and judicious boring. Your comments are welcome.

CONTINENTAL: The Continental flathead industrial engine powers literally hundreds of thousands of industrial machines including forklifts, welders and air compressors. But because this time tested workhorse is no longer in production, saving marginal block castings during the rebuild process is very important.

F245 SERIES: Over the years the factory has steadily increased the displacement of this six cylinder engine from 209 cubic inches out to 245 cubic inches. They have done this by enlarging the bore. As a result the cylinder walls are now quite thin and prone to cracking and porosity. This allows coolant to mix with and dilute the engine oil supply. While magnafluxing will reveal cracks, few rebuilders are able to pressure test and sonic test these blocks for porosity. As a result problems occur even after a thorough rebuild.

Several solutions have been tried without much success. These include sleeving a worn F245 back to its standard bore, pinning or stitching the cracked area (usually it extends into a valve seat), and circulating plastic sealant through the block. We believe a better way is to simply sleeve the six cylinder F245 engine back to the F227 Continental standard bore specs. In our remanufacturing center, we use a 1/8¼ wall sleeve (Nylen PN SL107)) with a 3.503¼ OD. We then install F227 Continental pistons and rings. The result is a much stronger block with no significant loss of power (76 HP for the F245 at 2400 RPM vs. 72 HP for the F227).

F135, F209, AND F218 SERIES: The four cylinder F135, six cylinder F209 and the F218 series blocks also are problematical, but not because of porosity or cracking. The replacement pistons are simply not available for these older engines.

To solve the problem of a lack of pistons, we simply machine these blocks to a current Continental bore size. That is we bore the F135 to a F163 standard bore and the F209 or F218 to a F227 standard bore. Fortunately, these castings were designed in an earlier age, before CAD ˜ CAM. As a result the blocks are very beefy with thick cylinder walls.

WISCONSIN V4 SERIES: The final flathead engine that this Tech Tip discusses is the Wisconsin V4 Series. These hardy air-cooled engines have been in production for years and are frequently rebuilt. The problem is that the factory offers only slightly oversize pistons. Usually the block is worn beyond these limits. One alternative is to purchase new cylinders (called Ðjugs¼) for roughly $750.00 each. A better idea is to simply sleeve the block back to standard. Yes, a purist could argue against putting cast iron repair sleeves into an aluminum block because of the different metal”s coefficients of expansion. However, we have successfully placed cast iron sleeves into aluminum blocks without any problems since we remanufactured Chevrolet Vega engines in the 1960”s. Sleeving these blocks is far superior and more economical than buying $1500.00 worth of new jugs.

Please call with any questions. We”re different: we want to help.
The Technical Committee,
Foley Marine and Industrial