Filing piston rings
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Like I was saying in an earlier post of mine, filing piston rings is usually a long drawn out and very tedious operation, BUT can be very rewarding in the form of more HP. The more I read and learn, it seems there is alot of free HP in ring design and ring gaps. I chose file fit rings for this engine, some of my earlier near stock or slightly modified engines always used a pre-fit ring. Here's a few pictures of how I set my ring gaps.
I first put the top ring in the bore then use a piston upside down to square it into the bore about a quarter of the way down. As shown here
Then I use my feeler gauges which in this case was .018 which was too tight for me, I was shooting for .022 top ring gap. As shown here.
I then went on to doing all top and second ring gaps for all the holes, it is quite tedious but a rewarding task when building your engine. Here is the ring filer I used.
Now I know there is alot more to piston rings than I can even begin to comprehend, but I know from my little bit of research and talking with friends that my method will be just fine. Oh also, I set the second ring gap wider at .026 for the second ring.
After about 2 hours of filing rings, I set out on final assembly of my 408 stroker rotating assembly. Till next time.
Labels: 408 piston rings, 408 stroker rings, file fit rings, moly rings, stroker piston rings
posted by SteveO @ 8:34 AM,
