How To Identify A Cracked Wet Liner Before Installation
With all the heavy-duty diesel engines out there with wet liners, nothing can be more aggravating than a second teardown due to coolant in a cylinder from a cracked liner. There is a good chance the liner was cracked before you ever touched it. As thick as they are, they can be cracked at the fac- tory when a pallet on a forklift gets slammed into another pallet or wall, etc. When you receive them, they look fine so you install them and at this point, check the liner ID for out of round at the top, middle, and bottom. If more than .002” out of round, the liner could be cracked at that area. Cracks of this type are so fine you cannot see them with the naked eye until after the engine has run and gets carbon in it. Most of the time cracked liners are more than .008” out of round, making them easy to find. By checking the liner ID after installation, it may also tell you if there is a rolled O-ring or distorted parent bore in the block, etc. You can measure the OD of the liner for “out of round” before installation if so desired.
Kevin Borkowski
Tom’s Agri-Diesel, Inc
Harlan, IA
December, 2014
