263 cyl sleeves

I've finally pulled my 706's engine apart and have the pistons out and am wondering how hard it is to change the sleeves. I tapped one up from the bottom and it moved a bit, but how hard are they to get back in? Only two have a slight ridge in them, but I only want to do this once. The engine has 4600 hrs on it and it is all original. Any advice would be appreciated,thanks.

clean the bores real good, and make sure its clean around the sleeve ridge at the top, I put them in a cooler with dry ice for about an hour, use gloves, they got in very easy, just make sure they go in all the way.

I did that with my 656 last year. You'll want to make a puller to get them out. I used some 3/4 inch threaded rod and ground a steel plate to fit just inside the block walls. Came out easily enough.

Putting them back in was a little more challenging. (I readily admit I am a parts swapper and not a real mechanic so take my experience for what its worth.) I kept the sleeves in the freezer and put a light bulb in each bore for about 1 hour before pounding in the sleeves. Was going well enough until I BUSTED a 1/2" x 2" chunk out of one of the new sleeves. Had to order a single sleeve. I left a 100 watt light bulb in that bore overnight before trying again. Also had a Halogen flood light focused on that part of the block for the entire night. Went in ok.

I used up a lot of scrap 2x4 and 4x4 blocks pounding in the sleeves. I had to whack them pretty hard. Be sure to have enough scrap wood around before starting on each sleeve. If you read all of the old posts you will find some that state when you pound in sleeves you introduce a bulge into the middle of the sleeve. I wouldn't dispute those posts but I didn't know how else to get those sleeves in. (I like the dry ice idea that cole in mo replied with. I would try that next time. Seems much less violent)

Thread Stealing Side Topic. After the rebuild I only 43 pounds of oil pressure on start up; would go to almost nothing after 1/2 hour. Had to tear it down again this spring to find out why. For me it was a STUPID and expensive mistake not taking the crank to a machine shop when I tore the engine down the first time last year.

When I first tore it down I couldn't find any marks on any of the bearings indicating oversize so I replaced everything with standard size bearings. A real mechanic friend of mine volunteered to look at it for me. Turns out the mains on the crank had been ground .010 under at some time in the past. He said you have to measure ever journal every time. He indicated he'd seen cases on older engines were only 1 journal was ground. Long story short I had to have the mains ground to .020 and the rods .010. Buddy said the pistons and head looked good though so I guess I didn't screw that part up too badly!

Good luck.