I am having a bad oil consumption problem with my 418. I have eliminated all but bad rings from it. I am not going to pull the heads to check it out. If Im going to all tha trouble Im just going to pull the motor and rebuild it even bigger and do a couple of other things with it. When I was filing one of the rings it snapped when I squeezed it together to grind both sides of the ring with a grinding wheel. These are JE plasma moly rings on JE SRP pistons. I dont trust these rings since I broke one compressing it. I may have gotten a "bad" set. Im going to get the block bored another .01 and put some different pistons for more compression and I will NOT be using JE rings again. I have heard bad things about total seals cause oil consumption problems. I did a search and found that there isnt a whole lot of info on this subject to be found. What are the best rings to go with for a sprayed app. I was looking at the hellfires they seem to be good and recommended by a few people. Any advice or experiences, or ring manufacturers to steer clear of let me know. Im ready to get this thing running right.

 

do a leakdown test to see which cylinders are bad that way you dont have to pull it apart......or just toss on a vacuum pump, pull out about 9-10" of vacuum and oil prblem solved


as far as rings and nitrous i have had nothing but good experience with total seal rings and Akerly and Childs low tension rings.

 

An old timer told me this method for checking if a given brand of rings are worthy. You will destroy one in the process but this is how it is performed:

Place the ring on a table and bend from the grove until you touch the table on the other side. If it snaps they suck. If it simply looks like a pretzel its a good ring brand....

 

lol hit or miss with that method! You can buy my "bending" rings for me!

 

I dont think Ill be trying that method

It may be true but I honestly dont se many rings making it through that test. Also plasma moly rings are hard and wouldnt pass that test.

Any more experiences/suggestions

 

The ductility of the ring is a completely different subject than the quality of the ring. The 2nd ring on all most rings is is iron, and they'll snap often if you don't use a tapered bore ring compressor. Most top rings are ductile iron, a bit more bendable, but that doesn't have anything to do with life or power.

Although there are a lot of people with branded rings, there's only a few real manufacturers.

The best way a "normal guy" has to guage a ring set is by "light tight". Putting the ring in a bore with a deck plate. Shining a light behind it and judging how much light bleeds by. A good ring is 90% light tight. less than 10% or less of the ring won't be touching the bore. Sometimes you need to go through several sets to find 8 good ones. The rounder the better.

Oil rings are a different matter, The two main types are the hastings style and the ss50u Sealed power ring.

The REALLY nice stuff is steel. Total Seal just purchased the equipment to do those rings, but Wiseco sells a steel ring pack called the GF ring. It's 1.2, 1.2, 3mm, holds up to any power and lasts a long time. Judged very round and very flat by the people with the equipment to measure it. In this months Engine Masters magazine, there's a 427 ls1 built by Steve Dulcich for a Baha application. On the Westech dyno, they recorded the lowest level of blowby they ever tested with their meter

 

Brian is exactly correct. It is a quick and easy test that the normal engine builder can perform. You would be surprised at how many don't pass this test! Don't forget the deck plates, as these motors go quite a bit out of round in the top of the bore with them on.

 

Well I dont know of a shop that will just let me borrow a torque plate

I think my pistons have 1.5mm rings with 3mm oil ring. I plan on reusing the pistons at the moment after having a discussion with a buddy of mine I may get an LS2 block and get it bored would be about the same as getting custom forged pistons but I would till have the 6L iron block left over for my next project plus be a little lighter.

So Wiseco makes some good rings and Total Seal will be making some shortly it sounds like.

 

TOTAL SEAL BY FAR. GAPLESS SECOND RING COMBINATION WOULD WORK TOUGH FOR YOU. YOU SURE YOU DIDN'T GET LOW, OR VERY LOW OIL TENSION RINGS FROM JE. YOU CHECK THE PART NUMBER OR CALL THEM. OH AND I AM CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR RING END GAPS? TO BIG MAYBE. BOREx.0045 TOP AND BOREx.005 SEC. GOOD LUCK!