Rings or not

[Guest Anonymous]

Head’s at the machine shop getting cleaned and the valves re-done. The tops of the pistons have pretty heavy carbon deposits. The bores are smooth and shiny with no discernible ridge at the top. Bottom end has never been a problem.

My choices, as I see it, are:

1) Clean the pistons in the block and make sure that all of the crap gets removed

2) Remove the pistons from the block, clean, re-ring, check bearings, and rebuild

I know I’m skipping a few things, but you guys get the gist of it. Any/all opinions, thoughts, flames or comments are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks

[Guest Anonymous]

If you change the rings you must deglaze the bores with a stone brush, preferably one with balls rather than long straight stone, wich will not reach all the surface unless you spin it into the bore for 5 minutes and then get a 0,060 oversize block (!)

Pat

[Guest Anonymous]

from your message "bottom end has never been a problem"

if this is true just clean the piston tops back to bare metal and then spray all the orifices with air to clean all the particals out. Warning: cover the rest of the car with some tarps as oils and crap flys all over the place.

I have taken the pistons out and re-ringed with the block in the car, but it's a lot of work and not for the timid. For instance, after honing the block should be washed with warm soapy water to remove the metal particals. This is a freakin mess and introducing all that water on the crank, bearing and block - not for the timid. I blew it with air several times to be sure all was dry. And today after about 10K miles everything is still OK.

[Guest Anonymous]

Anyway if you do not do it, you may confront the problem of having an upper engine with perfect seal and a weak lower engine. Guess what happens. The compression will try to escape thru the lower engine. Usually not good...

[Guest Anonymous]

deglazing could POSSIBLY cause the ring gaps to go out of spec down the road since you are removing minute amounts of the bore. The article said that if your bores are in spec and not scratched (gouged) just reuse as is. I really don't know if this is true..just passing on what I read.

Now on a related note, I read all of this 1 day AFTER I broke the glaze in my S14 block that I am overhauling. So I am not following the advise..but I did use the long stone type deglazer and just did it enough to slightly scratch up the cyl walls and flooding with WD-40 during the proccess...only time will tell if I did the right thing.

[Guest Anonymous]

(nt)