James, do your research before you speak please. This forum is for facts, not un-educated opinions. This is a Honda, not a Volvo. Most people in the Honda community do one or the other when building a block. It does help, otherwise all of these PROFESSIONAL engine builders such as Golden Eagle, Benson, and Darton would not do them. It may differ from engine to engine, but this a proven method for holding power in Honda's. Period. Now please explain this craziness concerning knife-edgeing head gaskets and other stuff you spoke of. I have never heard of it before, and if it is indeed real, I need to be schooled. Thanks.

 

Reinforced crush rings around each piston bore ensure proper seal and protection from detonation. More reliable than copper head gaskets and much cheaper the Oringing your cylinder head.

Its been used in other areas of machine work before used for heads

 

golden eagle is junk...... every G/E sleeved block ive ever seen has had issues with sleeves dropping. the culprit is how they machine the step that holds the sleeve in place... if you dont believe me, just ask them why they tell you to run radiator stop leak in ur cooling system. because there design sucks.... no race car should EVER have stop leak in the cooling system, much less should it be PRESCRIBED as something needed to make it all work.


anyhow what you choose is going to depend on what type of head gasket you run. if you intend to stick with a factory honda gasket then oringing the block will cause the gasket to fail {they are too brittle} solid gaskets like copper ones seal well {by seal i mean compression} but for street use, they can leak copious amounts of water between the head and block, especially when the engine is cold.

if it were me id have the deck machined smooth, and use a cometic turbo gasket. not sure what they are called exactly, but basically the "o-ring" is built into the gasket so u get an extra snug seal around the cylinders. the benefit of having it in the gasket is when u pull the head u wont have to worry about replacing the orings, or checking the step.

anyhow what kind of sleeves are you getting? dartons or aebs? something of that nature..... otherwise leaving the block open deck an just changing the factory sleeves to some other random iron sleeve would be worthless, and quite possibly a downgrade from the stockers.

 

my experience comes from my first tuner. he was working on a 700hp supercharged mustang. Heads kept lifting....or persay the coolant was overpressurizing at 500rwhp @4000rpm.

took the heads off after the 2nd time doing it. Reinstalled headgasket with plastigauge installed. found out the area around the threads for the headbolts were being pulled out more than the middle of the block and inbetween the cylinders. the guy took material from the headgasket near the headbolt holes. put it back together. made the power and then some. reliable as a low hp motor from what i heard a year later asking about it. This accomplished the same thing as steping the deck. however, it wouldnt have been needed in a lower hp application. it was done to FIX a problem. I've never seen an oring resolve an issue like that where the motor was actually making good power. 200hp NA KA had more problems with orings than without. same thing with a 450hp KA. stock parts ie, stock HG and bolts, no oringing help power reliably once the switch was made.

 

I run a GE block and am happy with it. There are hundreds of people on Honda-tech as well as a couple on here that run them with no problem. I have to admit, there have been quite a few sinking sleeves lately which does concern me. I hope I have no problems.

 

yeah that would suck man... i think u got my gt3 game from sometime this summer i left at your place (i think its in the case) when we were playing it...

 

Darton sleeves made for David Benson...see the "p.s." in my previous post for more info about the sleeves im getting.

 

stepdecked seems to be the way to go. o rings may be a good fix, but it the block is in good shape there should be no need.

 

GE o-ringed B16 block with 84mm sleeves will hold 40 PSI of boost. If you are not boosting, save your money and just get a good head gasket.

 

WTF is a knife edged gasket? Do you mean a fire ring as part of the gasket?

That's the funniest one I have heard in a while, almost as good as "tuning on EGTs alone b/c a/f isn't the way to tune"