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29 March 2024

Racing Sleeves

Wet Sleeves

As the name implies, sleeves which are surrounded by water when installed are considered wet sleeves. The significant difference in sleeve design beyond the terms wet or dry are what structure within the cylinder carries the load. In a dry application the cylinder compressive force is carried by the sleeve and the block. In a wet sleeve application the compressive force is totally supported by the sleeve. Therefore, by nature of application and intended use, wet sleeves must be very strong and mechanically able to withstand compressive and frictional forces throughout their total unsupported length.

Special wet sleeves are designed and supplied for transforming open deck engines in to semi closed or fully closed deck applications.

Dry Sleeves

Dry sleeves are named so because the sleeve body is not exposed to any cooling liquid within the block and is always installed in a block with an interference fit.

Technical Issues

Sleeves may be manufactured from cast iron, alloyed iron, ductile iron, steel or aluminum. Within the iron category sleeves may be manufactured using an as-cast procedure or a more common centrifugal die machine. Sleeve quality and consistency are more predictable using the centrifugal process.but even better when hot rolling or forging is involved. This can only be done in steel sleeves and that is why  DP prefers and produces billet steel sleeves in 2 qualities. One is hot rolled and the other which is the stronger chrome moly is either forged or extruded.

DP produces multi piece sleeve custom designs or mono-block sleeve custom designs.