A shop honed my engine, aluminum SBC but used bolts on the torque plate instead of my ARP studs. Rings didn't seal hardly at all. Re-did the job and same mistake, thought I was wrong. Went to another shop, borrowed deck plate for the weekend and mapped cylinders with heads on then near duplicated with deck plate, studs and spacers on studs for long ones. Sealed up great! Gave them the spacers and info I learned.
Years ago as a kid I worked part-time one summer for a school bus company. One day they sent me to pick up some cylinder sleeves. The diesel shop owner helped me carry them out to the car, but I made the mistake of laying them on their side. He said cylinder sleeves must be stored on end and never laid down because they can warp. That blew me away and never forgot it. I've always wondered if the block can warp over time, or to some extent also?
I read an article many years ago. I’m pretty sure it was Mopar action and her McCandless was being interviewed and if you know his name is Mr. four-speed back in the 60s and stuff he was one of the best quarter mile drag racers of all time and he said when you bought your torque plates up your board them up like see when you first start your shift in the morning and let the block just sit all day long or if you do it at the end of the day let it sit overnight, and then hone it. He said it takes a while for that block to get done squirming around, this is six in a rowJim from Kennerdell Pennsylvania, I have a 91.5 dodge with I’ll give you three guesses. What’s under the hood all right I like your tutorials guy
from the king of rings keith is the man i was having blow by on my harley m8 which is 128 ci switched to total seal gas ported rings amazing how much my cylinders have dried up i removed my external vents.dont need them anymore thank you total seal
@@dawnmclees We bought the car in 2001, the guy did a lot of traveling, clearly, it had a little over 800,000 miles on it at that time, the thing had no rust and drove like new, and the car was in our family for many years, we all took turns, it was the car that was always there and ready to go, we put another 500,000 on it, never had any problems with it, always use Royle Purple oil, last year my youngest daughter was using it while her Dodge minivan was in the shop and it got wrecked, the car with the most recorded and documented miles of history is a 70 Camaro with like 4.3 million miles on it. I bought a 96 Cutlass Supreme that I use for my everyday car now, can't imagine not having one, flawless car, it will have 400,000 miles this summer, not even broke in yet.
Also.... off subject ..but extremely important .. never put a head gasket on your head, and scribe a line around it like a famous fellow did when wanting to enlarge the head chamber,.. the gaskets are always bigger than the bore ! You will end up with the chamber overhanging the bore, which interferes with flow !
Also remember it's important to use the correct length head studs / bolts with your torque plate. I saw once were a shop used some bolts with only 2 threads in the block . Yeah didn't work.
This is an interesting topic and obviously something you want to consider when you run in your engine. I would like to know why you would rehone a deformed bore, without considering a boring process? Let me know if you have any info on this. Cheers
My vg30dett with je pistons uses about a litre of oil castrol edge 10/60 every 1000 kms. The only thing i get in the catch can is condensation and yellowy sludge, no oil. I havnt noticed smoke from exhaust either. It does make 450rwkw. I also have had it re-ringed before. What are my options? Thanks
Well this is theoretically correct realistically bore will distort unless your boring block and hone it with torque plate at operating temp i dont know anyone that does that
I have a good old Kwik-way boring bar that I made an adapter to hold a tiny Last Word +/- 0.030" dial indicator. One thing you can do with it is clamp an arbor in the main bearing bores and then proceed to shim the base of the boring bar to get exact perpendicularity - which is UBER-important. With this rig I have detected an odd thing which happens on sleeved aluminum blocks - the used bore will still be to stock size = no wear at all - BUT THE MIDDLE OF THE BORE IS OUT OF LINE WITH THE TOP AND BOTTOM. I can't think of any other tool that would have let me see that. Makes it impossible to get truly tight ring sealing !
@@TotalSeal No the entire bore was round and to size to about .0002". Pretty sure piston thrust had warped middle of the bore over about .004". Centered up on untouched top of bore and untouched sides of bottom of bore then lastly centered on the bottom of bore that skirts-had-run-on-but-not-worn. Middle of bore showed - .004" other side showed + .004". I thought I was hallucinating but it was all very repeatable hence real.
@@TotalSeal I got the idea to do that because my father worked for Moore Tool Company back in the 70s on their extreme-precision Jig Measuring Machine. My rig-up is an order of magnitude less accurate and precise but I do laugh nastily at guys who think possession of a ID mike set or dial bore gauge makes them experts. Where I come from rotary hones are to be trusted to take the bore from one thou under on up to size and nothing more. In the age of Nikasil plating onto bare alloy cylinder walls boring lapping and plating are the wave of the future for high performance. We've run quite a few engine with no piston rings at all - just labyrinth-seal-grooves.
What I did was to torque on the head n then taken measurements from underneath ... measurements can be taken at different headbutt torque value... I make note of distortion , n work to compensate, getting the cylinder as round as possible... But under high pressure n heat the cylinder will still distort 🤷♂️
Hi approximately 1978 I purchased some cord piston rings were the compression rings intertwined together basically slotting in to each other no gaping needed were these the first prototype as they worked extremely well and I can't get access to this type of ring can you help thanks
A bit different application, but how about an aluminum Harley Davidson cylinder that is compressed between the nuts on top and the crankcase on the bottom by way of long studs that run through the head and the cylinder?
I have an older Sportster (SPUTHE XR) that is built this way...cast-in meehanite liners in aluminum cylinders...works fine...long chro-moly studs from the cases to top of heads..no gaskets, cyl-cases and cyl-heads are lapped together...never leaks.
Very interesting. With regards to aluminium blocks being difficult to get round bores in- is this why aluminium block engines are now being designed open deck, to eliminate head fastener torque distortion in the top part of the bores?
Aluminum blocks are a bitch to get the distortions out of the cyl bores. That's because of the flex in the bores while honing. The fix is to take your time on the final hone (I like to use 820 stones), and using light pressure to straighten them out.
i saw a dyno test of a nascar cup engine where it lost less than 10 HP after file filing the top ring gap to .125. blew oil all over the dyno room but lost very little HP
So, the profilometer, is measuring deltas in bore finish after the engine has been run? I see the utility of this for diagnostics, but, not the usefulness in preventing the issue.
Actually, the profilometer just measures the surface finish of the cylinder bore, so it can be used during the honing process to make sure the correct finish is being created. It can also be used after the fact to see the condition of the used cylinder as well.
Has anyone ever been so focused on a nearly perfect cylinder that instead of using a TQ plate they TQ down the heads they're using and hone the block from the bottom?
That would be ideal, but the hone head needs to overstroke the bore to create the correct cross hatch angle. That means the head would have holes in them in line with the bore. Now, maybe some people have done that…
What do you do on an engine that has the head and cylinder cast as one piece or otherwise irreversibly joined into a single unit? I have an engine designed this way that I'll need to do. It's a vintage 2 stroke outboard with a comically low compression ratio, so perfect sealing isn't mandatory, but what if it was?
I have a blow by problem on a Ducati Diavel 1260, the oil reaches the air box ... i measured everything, the taper and ovality are less than 0.01mm, the piston / cylinder clearance is 0.04mm, the rings are perfect and have a gap of 0.15mm I do not know what to do...
@@TotalSeal the crankcase is connected to the air box in which it is equipped with a blow by valve. The problem is that we are not talking about vapors that condense but about oil that accumulates in the air box and drips down to the ground through the air box vent, like when a ring is broken ... Evidently the pressure passes the rings and blows the oil into the air box. Watching your videos I was thinking of decreasing the viscosity of the oil to increase the seal of the rings, do you think it can help to switch from a 15w50 to a 10w40? and thank you so much for the help!
@@edogsx 10-4, There could be a few different causes. First, check the oil level when the engine is warmed up. Multigrade oils can expand in volume with temperature, so make sure it is not overfull when warmed up. Next, check the leakdown when the engine is warmed up as well. If you can access a profilometer, check the cylinder bore surface finish. That's another area that can cause blow-by problems. Finally, the thinner oil might help, especially if the oil ring tension is too low.
@@TotalSeal I apologize for the late reply and thank you for your help, Ducati has provided me with 2 new cylinders complete with pistons and rings for free. I checked them and I didn't notice any difference compared to the old ones but I changed them anyway ... If I can give you some advice you should contact Ducati, on the latest V2 models they have many blow by and oil consumption problems and I think your products could be very useful!
Bon Ami cleanser… little pick in each cylinder port or little puff in air inlet (after mass flow sensors) and you got it solved. Many gas , natural or propane, engines you cannot get the rings seated even after 20k-30k miles down the road but this works, and doesn’t kill the engine. Why Bon Ami is it’s a diatomic power and this natural powered breaks down as it scrubs getting ever finer lapping compound.
A shop honed my engine, aluminum SBC but used bolts on the torque plate instead of my ARP studs. Rings didn't seal hardly at all. Re-did the job and same mistake, thought I was wrong. Went to another shop, borrowed deck plate for the weekend and mapped cylinders with heads on then near duplicated with deck plate, studs and spacers on studs for long ones. Sealed up great! Gave them the spacers and info I learned.
Sorry you had to endure that, but thanks for sharing.
Years ago as a kid I worked part-time one summer for a school bus company. One day they sent me to pick up some cylinder sleeves. The diesel shop owner helped me carry them out to the car, but I made the mistake of laying them on their side. He said cylinder sleeves must be stored on end and never laid down because they can warp. That blew me away and never forgot it. I've always wondered if the block can warp over time, or to some extent also?
At 4:15, someone finally mentions installing head and checking from the bottom.
Its never the same!
I read an article many years ago. I’m pretty sure it was Mopar action and her McCandless was being interviewed and if you know his name is Mr. four-speed back in the 60s and stuff he was one of the best quarter mile drag racers of all time and he said when you bought your torque plates up your board them up like see when you first start your shift in the morning and let the block just sit all day long or if you do it at the end of the day let it sit overnight, and then hone it. He said it takes a while for that block to get done squirming around, this is six in a rowJim from Kennerdell Pennsylvania, I have a 91.5 dodge with I’ll give you three guesses. What’s under the hood all right I like your tutorials guy
5.9 cummins 12v intercooled
from the king of rings keith is the man i was having blow by on my
harley m8 which is 128 ci switched to total seal gas ported rings
amazing how much my cylinders have dried up i removed my external
vents.dont need them anymore thank you total seal
Thanks!
a very informative video . the guy in the video can easily explain technically for those who have a minimum knowledge . thanks a lot
Glad it was helpful!
239k miles on my Jeep GC. Still running fine!
Had a 93 Olds Cutlass Supreme with one million 350,000 miles on it.
@@user-Dr. Holy shit how did you do it??
@@dawnmclees We bought the car in 2001, the guy did a lot of traveling, clearly, it had a little over 800,000 miles on it at that time, the thing had no rust and drove like new, and the car was in our family for many years, we all took turns, it was the car that was always there and ready to go, we put another 500,000 on it, never had any problems with it, always use Royle Purple oil, last year my youngest daughter was using it while her Dodge minivan was in the shop and it got wrecked, the car with the most recorded and documented miles of history is a 70 Camaro with like 4.3 million miles on it. I bought a 96 Cutlass Supreme that I use for my everyday car now, can't imagine not having one, flawless car, it will have 400,000 miles this summer, not even broke in yet.
@@user-Dr. Thank you for sharing that’s incredible!!!
Also.... off subject ..but extremely important .. never put a head gasket on your head, and scribe a line around it like a famous fellow did when wanting to enlarge the head chamber,.. the gaskets are always bigger than the bore ! You will end up with the chamber overhanging the bore, which interferes with flow !
These guys know their "onions".😊
Thanks!
Also remember it's important to use the correct length head studs / bolts with your torque plate. I saw once were a shop used some bolts with only 2 threads in the block . Yeah didn't work.
Great point!
This is an interesting topic and obviously something you want to consider when you run in your engine. I would like to know why you would rehone a deformed bore, without considering a boring process? Let me know if you have any info on this. Cheers
A modern CNC hone can correct the deformed bore without the need for boring.
Great example and use case for a profilometer.
Exactly
My vg30dett with je pistons uses about a litre of oil castrol edge 10/60 every 1000 kms. The only thing i get in the catch can is condensation and yellowy sludge, no oil. I havnt noticed smoke from exhaust either. It does make 450rwkw. I also have had it re-ringed before. What are my options? Thanks
Well this is theoretically correct realistically bore will distort unless your boring block and hone it with torque plate at operating temp i dont know anyone that does that
I have a good old Kwik-way boring bar that I made an adapter to hold a tiny Last Word +/- 0.030" dial indicator. One thing you can do with it is clamp an arbor in the main bearing bores and then proceed to shim the base of the boring bar to get exact perpendicularity - which is UBER-important.
With this rig I have detected an odd thing which happens on sleeved aluminum blocks - the used bore will still be to stock size = no wear at all - BUT THE MIDDLE OF THE BORE IS OUT OF LINE WITH THE TOP AND BOTTOM. I can't think of any other tool that would have let me see that. Makes it impossible to get truly tight ring sealing !
Interesting, is the middle of the bore tighter than the top and bottom?
@@TotalSeal No the entire bore was round and to size to about .0002".
Pretty sure piston thrust had warped middle of the bore over about .004".
Centered up on untouched top of bore and untouched sides of bottom of bore then lastly centered on the bottom of bore that skirts-had-run-on-but-not-worn.
Middle of bore showed - .004" other side showed + .004". I thought I was hallucinating but it was all very repeatable hence real.
@@patrickshaw8595 That is interesting.
@@TotalSeal I got the idea to do that because my father worked for Moore Tool Company back in the 70s on their extreme-precision Jig Measuring Machine. My rig-up is an order of magnitude less accurate and precise but I do laugh nastily at guys who think possession of a ID mike set or dial bore gauge makes them experts.
Where I come from rotary hones are to be trusted to take the bore from one thou under on up to size and nothing more. In the age of Nikasil plating onto bare alloy cylinder walls boring lapping and plating are the wave of the future for high performance. We've run quite a few engine with no piston rings at all - just labyrinth-seal-grooves.
Different Gaskets make a BIG difference to cylinder wall shapes. Test them yourself!!!
Yes!
What I did was to torque on the head n then taken measurements from underneath ... measurements can be taken at different headbutt torque value...
I make note of distortion , n work to compensate, getting the cylinder as round as possible...
But under high pressure n heat the cylinder will still distort 🤷♂️
That’s the right thing to do. There’s only combustion pressure on part of the 4 cycles, so the benefits of straighter and rounder still apply.
@@TotalSeal 😎
Is there a gauge you can use for blow by to measure engine health? Leak down, compression and blow by seems to be the best methods.
We sell leak down gauges that do a great job showing the health of the rings and the cylinders.
Hi approximately 1978 I purchased some cord piston rings were the compression rings intertwined together basically slotting in to each other no gaping needed were these the first prototype as they worked extremely well and I can't get access to this type of ring can you help thanks
If you have any of the used rings left (or pictures of them), contact our tech department at 623-587-7400. They can help you out.
A bit different application, but how about an aluminum Harley Davidson cylinder that is compressed between the nuts on top and the crankcase on the bottom by way of long studs that run through the head and the cylinder?
I have an older Sportster (SPUTHE XR) that is built this way...cast-in meehanite liners in aluminum cylinders...works fine...long chro-moly studs from the cases to top of heads..no gaskets, cyl-cases and cyl-heads are lapped together...never leaks.
Simulating that clamp load is important when honing the cylinder. That will reduce blow-by when the engine is running.
Very interesting. With regards to aluminium blocks being difficult to get round bores in- is this why aluminium block engines are now being designed open deck, to eliminate head fastener torque distortion in the top part of the bores?
Thanks for the question. The main reason for open decks on aluminum blocks is reducing material usage and weight.
@@TotalSeal Another reason I believe it has to do with the casting process, with less internal galleries it's easier to cast.
@@craigdavies8099 agreed
Aluminum blocks are a bitch to get the distortions out of the cyl bores. That's because of the flex in the bores while honing. The fix is to take your time on the final hone (I like to use 820 stones), and using light pressure to straighten them out.
What about Cryofreezing and High frequency vibration stress relieving?
Will these 2 steps not help?
Yes! Those are both excellent tools.
I'd like to see exactly how the OEMs bore and hone now days.
The way OEM’s hone today varies depending on the cylinder bore material and the piston ring coating.
i saw a dyno test of a nascar cup engine where it lost less than 10 HP after file filing the top ring gap to .125. blew oil all over the dyno room but lost very little HP
Yep! A little extra end gap doesn’t kill HP, but high levels of blow-by can cause all kinds of problems.
I just wish that you shortly describe what in world is blow-by actually.
Could you please tell me the relation ship between piston blow by vs engine speed
Past peak torque, cylinder pressure decreases, which reduces the gas pressure loading the rings.
The average home builder doesn’t have a torque plate. Is it worth measuring at that point? How about a steel block?
It depends on how much boost you are going to run.
@@TotalSealBoost? What's that?
So, the profilometer, is measuring deltas in bore finish after the engine has been run? I see the utility of this for diagnostics, but, not the usefulness in preventing the issue.
Actually, the profilometer just measures the surface finish of the cylinder bore, so it can be used during the honing process to make sure the correct finish is being created. It can also be used after the fact to see the condition of the used cylinder as well.
Has anyone ever been so focused on a nearly perfect cylinder that instead of using a TQ plate they TQ down the heads they're using and hone the block from the bottom?
That would be ideal, but the hone head needs to overstroke the bore to create the correct cross hatch angle. That means the head would have holes in them in line with the bore. Now, maybe some people have done that…
What do you do on an engine that has the head and cylinder cast as one piece or otherwise irreversibly joined into a single unit? I have an engine designed this way that I'll need to do. It's a vintage 2 stroke outboard with a comically low compression ratio, so perfect sealing isn't mandatory, but what if it was?
Over $100,000 for the tool sheesh
I understand the importance of bore geometry (after a dozen or so videos), but if you're sleeving your engine how critical is it?
Still important
I would think more critical because you are adding more distortion with anything pressed into the block.
I have a blow by problem on a Ducati Diavel 1260, the oil reaches the air box ...
i measured everything, the taper and ovality are less than 0.01mm, the piston / cylinder clearance is 0.04mm, the rings are perfect and have a gap of 0.15mm
I do not know what to do...
Does the crankcase vent to the intake? There are some engines set up that way.
@@TotalSeal the crankcase is connected to the air box in which it is equipped with a blow by valve.
The problem is that we are not talking about vapors that condense but about oil that accumulates in the air box and drips down to the ground through the air box vent, like when a ring is broken ...
Evidently the pressure passes the rings and blows the oil into the air box.
Watching your videos I was thinking of decreasing the viscosity of the oil to increase the seal of the rings, do you think it can help to switch from a 15w50 to a 10w40?
and thank you so much for the help!
@@edogsx 10-4, There could be a few different causes. First, check the oil level when the engine is warmed up. Multigrade oils can expand in volume with temperature, so make sure it is not overfull when warmed up.
Next, check the leakdown when the engine is warmed up as well.
If you can access a profilometer, check the cylinder bore surface finish. That's another area that can cause blow-by problems.
Finally, the thinner oil might help, especially if the oil ring tension is too low.
@@TotalSeal I apologize for the late reply and thank you for your help, Ducati has provided me with 2 new cylinders complete with pistons and rings for free.
I checked them and I didn't notice any difference compared to the old ones but I changed them anyway ...
If I can give you some advice you should contact Ducati, on the latest V2 models they have many blow by and oil consumption problems and I think your products could be very useful!
@@edogsx thanks! I’m glad they helped you out.
Does OldLadyClinton have blow-by
?
There is nothing worse than a horrible ring problem. The doctor sorted it out.
Bon Ami cleanser… little pick in each cylinder port or little puff in air inlet (after mass flow sensors) and you got it solved. Many gas , natural or propane, engines you cannot get the rings seated even after 20k-30k miles down the road but this works, and doesn’t kill the engine. Why Bon Ami is it’s a diatomic power and this natural powered breaks down as it scrubs getting ever finer lapping compound.
Add a anti-friction oil additive at every oil change
We never recommend adding anything to motor oil. There are plenty of good oils that already have anti-friction additives already in the oil.
Motorkote added to oil and lucus fuel additive in fuel . Runs smooth quiet cooler longer stronger.
@@TotalSealXADO company's Very Lube and other additives reduce friction to nearly zero. Is this a bad thing?
ITS JUST A SHAME GM ARE STILL TRYING TO BUILD ENGINES. GIVEING THE V8 A BAD NAME.