A friend of mine has a 509 400 block that has a cracked cylinder wall. He was going to toss it but I claimed it before he did. It just needs one sleeve to be right again, How much does this usually cost to do and is it a good idea?

I think around $75-85.

A properly installed sleeve is a good repair providing the crack doesn't continue to the deck or into the crankcase and provided the bottom of the sleeve sits against a ledge of original block material.

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Custom Auto, your source for quality machine work, cores and new parts at competetive pricing right here in British Columbia 1-888-563-4050
A Canadian, EH? (with a 10 second street car)

rust isnt what youre describing called step sleeving? or am i going down a different road. i heard the term used and the process described. i was told that it was the best way to do it.

There's a couple of ways to do this. One method is similar to the industrial engines where the top part of the sleeve has a rim. Another is when the bore damage is right to the bottom of the bore, there we install the sleeve in the lathe and machine the last half inch or so about .060" smaller in O.D. then machine a similar step in the block. The final and most common is to simply stop boring the block an 1/8" or so from the bottom so there is a ledge for the sleeve to rest on. What we are trying to accomplish is a mechanical stop to prevent the sleeve from sliding down.
Hope I explained it well,
Doug

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Custom Auto, your source for quality machine work, cores and new parts at competetive pricing right here in British Columbia 1-888-563-4050
A Canadian, EH? (with a 10 second street car)

i think i gotcha

Don't be surprised to see the sleeve sink even a few thousanths after the engine is torn back down. I have had a tough time finding even the high end shops doing this stuff right. I have found some shops aren't paying attention to the inside corner of the sleeve bore, and be it a radius or whatever in the bottom of the step, that doesn't allow the sleeve to completely settle down on the step, it will work it's way into the radius over time, sinking. Not sure it really matters though. I had a sleeve in a bowtie block that was sunk a few thousanths, and ran it for about... 3 years with big compression(15:1), and normal felpro gaskets. Never bothered fixing it and never had it leak. Go figure.

Also be aware that on a siamese bore engine, if the block is not going to be bored after the sleeve, the adjacent bores will not be round, until it is bored, or honed many many times over... So those 2 bores will have less ring seal than the sleeve.