melting aluminum mower engine blocks to get the sleeve out

I have 30 commercial lawn mower engine blocks. does any one melt these or heat them to get the cylinder sleeve out of it or do you spend more money creating the heat than the resulting aluminum is worth

has anyone cut them in half?

I've cut down a boat engine. I imagine it's a similar P.I.T.A.

I cut lengthwise through the bore, then used an air chisel to break off the liner. There is probably an easier way, since I know some rebuilders drop the liners whole. Although this one almost appeared it was cast around the liner? I dunno. I'm not an engine expert. I just destroy things.

If you're in this for the long haul you might look into building a furnace. That's one of my projects I have on a back burner, pun intended.

Member here has some videos on that. Not sure if his user is the same, but on youtube I believe it's "Oil Burner"?

He uses waste oil, which is what I plan to do also. I don't see how it would be cost effective to buy fuel or electric to run the size furnace needed to melt down engine blocks.

The beauty of his setup is you can toss all kinds of junk in there, and return to a molten pool of aluminum. No need to spend hours getting every nut, bolt, screw, whatever off, as I am guilty of having done. Toss it in and go work on something else.

I want one too. It will be a small one. I was thinking of Alum ingots and copper ingots for EBay. I was going to make my own coal out of a hard wood.

Here's the guy Idaho Scrapper was referring to. He's funny and provides safety tips also.

A quick google search shows that quite a few different lawnmower engines can sell for over $100 each ... a quick trip through Ebay shows a lot of sellable parts.

It may be worth your time to try to rebuild a few engines instead of scrapping them out !

Even with the sleeves removed wouldn't the oily saturated block still be considered dirty aluminum? One would think dirty aluminum would bring more value with the sleeves intact. The steel sleeve certainly has no value for scrap alone besides maybe 5 cents. As far as the block goes. We raced junior dragsters. At the beginning we used Briggs 5 horse raptor blocks with sleeves. My son blew one of them to pieces while racing. The block had a nice window in it from the forged aluminum aftermarket rod going through the block and 8K RPM. Sounded like a grenade going off. The sleeve dropped to the bottom of the block. That's one way to extract it. I have seen people hit the blocks with a sledge hammer and split the block enough to knock the sleeve loose.

Originally Posted by darious

I have 30 commercial lawn mower engine blocks. does any one melt these or heat them to get the cylinder sleeve out of it or do you spend more money creating the heat than the resulting aluminum is worth

has anyone cut them in half?

Originally Posted by RLS0812

A quick google search shows that quite a few different lawnmower engines can sell for over $100 each ... a quick trip through Ebay shows a lot of sellable parts.

It may be worth your time to try to rebuild a few engines instead of scrapping them out !

these were the engines not worth a rebuild. they are already stripped of all parts

Originally Posted by Repurposer

Even with the sleeves removed wouldn't the oily saturated block still be considered dirty aluminum? One would think dirty aluminum would bring more value with the sleeves intact. The steel sleeve certainly has no value for scrap alone besides maybe 5 cents. As far as the block goes. We raced junior dragsters. At the beginning we used Briggs 5 horse raptor blocks with sleeves. My son blew one of them to pieces while racing. The block had a nice window in it from the forged aluminum aftermarket rod going through the block and 8K RPM. Sounded like a grenade going off. The sleeve dropped to the bottom of the block. That's one way to extract it. I have seen people hit the blocks with a sledge hammer and split the block enough to knock the sleeve loose.

in the past I have brought in piles of string trimmer blocks. those are all aluminum with no steel sleeve the thin coating of nikisil in the cylinder is non magnetic and didnt seem to bother the scrap yard. those parts were all greasy and dirty and I still were counted as cast aluminum

My neighbor made his own propane smelt. He has a hydraulic press that he uses to break the motors into manageable pieces the he put them into his smelt it has 2 layers of expanded metal which catches the steel such as bolts and sleeves works pretty good. His mold at the bottom when full makes blocks that average 120lbs

There's not much difference between clean cast and dirty aluminum where I'm at (NC). A month ago there was a 4 cent difference $0.34 versus $0.31. There's a lot of motors out there that don't have a steel sleeve. I used to bore these out, put a new piston and rings in, and it's almost as good as new. don't forget about the cast iron valve seats. These can usually be pried up and out with the edge of a large round punch.

Can you get us a picture of it? That would sounds awesome, I have a lot of computer heat sinks that have some wire brackets or screws in them. I would love to see his set up. If you could get he doesn't mind u sharing it with us.

Most yards are not going to buy customer ingots, and if they do you will not get a good cast aluminum price, expect breakage,
why?
well good cast aluminum (356) is a top dollar aluminum because it has Silicon (12%) in it which is a premium since it goes right back into the furnace.
you can make ingots out of any aluminum, so the yard SHOULD consider it to be the worst aluminum possible, so you are looking at getting about half it's real value if you are selling actual 356 cast aluminum. so don't make ingots,

if you are selling ingots on Ebay, and you sell someone a problem ingot, say one with some 2000 or 7000 series scrap in it, they are going to be POed and rightfully so,
and the first time you get a magnesium piece in your furnace will probably end your tinkering in metal melting

V/r HT1

Darius i talked to mr Cormier yesterday, he said the next time he goes to his property to melt some more he will call me. He also said thet if your gonna melt down alluminum as he does do t li.it yourself to just alluminum. Place an ad on craigslist or go buy your local landfill and ask them to seperate the automotive batteries for you, they cannot accept them in a landfill and most time they will be glad to do it. Then you can neutralize the acid and melt the lead. Invest in some molds and make fishhing weights. You can make good money selling to lo al shops. And if you are crushing the blocks lokk for a used houshold garbage compactor a iron plate on the top and bottom will do the trick just fine. And makes a pretty good square of alluminum cans to sell. I know some of this is a little off topic, but im telling you excactly what he said word for word. He also said that if he has the time he could possibly make one for you if you were interested.