Re ringing a cylinder with a ridge in it ?

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

I need very little time from this motor, if I get 5 k miles out of it , I will be thrilled . .

This is the reason to cut the heck out of the ridge and not worry about how perfectly the top ring works. You just don't want it to whack into the ridge and break.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

To the point, beveled or chamfered top outside edges of rings will nullify the job of the piston ring.

No it won't. Grinding away 5-10% of the corner isn't going to make the ring stop working entirely. He is only trying to get 5k miles out of the engine.

[fastfredracing]

Well, it is Jim for the win. I reamed the worst hole, but found that few minutes with my Sunnen CK-10 Yard Hone, (3 finger hone with a cordless drill), did a pretty nice job of making every thing nice again . I hung the pistons on the rods last night, and 'Im on my way out there now to measure it all up, fit the rings and get the bottom end back together today/tomorrow .
This has been fun. I am building this motor with the tool set that I use to rehab houses with . I've had to bring a few tools home from the shop but for the most part, this is getting built with cheapo hand tools from lowe's and tractor supply .
Remember when cars were simple ?

[1990C4S]

I can't imagine doing that sort of work all day, then again at home in the evening/weekends. I'm way too lazy.

Props.

[fastfredracing]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

I can't imagine doing that sort of work all day, then again at home in the evening/weekends. I'm way too lazy.

Props.

haha , I just came in and told my wife that this is why I became a mechanic . Im out side , got a hot coffee the birds are chirping, the radio is on, and not one person has interrupted me , not once the whole time . This is nivanna to me . No deadlines, no ringinig phones, no price point to worry about and I can walk away at any point if I get tired of it .
Suprisingly out of the 4 ugly cylinders that had the larger ridges, only one of them fell outside of range for taper. All the ring ends still fall within spec up in the top of the cylinder so I think I am good to go . I bet it runs 100% . If it does not explode at startup, it will probably go 25,000 miles . Bearings, and crank are nice The motor looks fresh , just that this little 350 spent its first 30,000 miles pushing around 24,000 pounds, then sat in a field for 11 years .

[speeder]

A 350 in that? Wow, it's been worked hard.

[Baz]

Alas......it was the German in you who won the battle.....

[svandamme]

add some fine grit sand to the intake as you break in the engine..
the sand will sand down that ridge an bob's yer uncle.
Run 5 kilograms over half an hour at slow, building up to high revs, one cyllinder at a time...

Why bother with a machine shop, the engine is a machine itself and sand is the same material used for honing (sillicon)

[DanielDudley]

You will get an easy 40K out of that motor. Probably lots more.

I can tell you that with all of the confidence of a farm boy.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

Remember when cars were simple ?

Yep. I had a '63 Dodge pickup for 3or 4 years and never had a key for it. I hotwired it every time I drove it. I loaded it to a friend one winter weekend who left the gas cap off when he put gas in it. The tank got snow in it which melted and froze in the fuel line. It was cold as a witch's toenails and I needed my truck, so I took a punch and punched a hole in the top of the fuel tank (behind the seat) and ran a copper tubing from the tank, out the passenger's window, under the edge of the hood, to the fuel pump.
Had a 1950 Chevy pickup that threw a rod. It didn't go through the block but it badly buggered the crankshaft. I cut the rod off with a cutting torch, beat on the piston until I could get it out of the cylinder, and drove a 5 cylinder Chevy for the better part of a summer.
I won't go into rebabbiting the rods and mains in a Fordson engine. That's one part of old engines that was not simple.

[DanielDudley]

The pistons in your typical four cylinder engine will collectively rise and fall one million times in a thousand miles. In order to burn a quart of oil every thousand miles, you are only using a millionth of a quart per cylinder every rotation of the engine.

I find it to be a darn near miracle that most engines don't use oil at anywhere near that rate, can revolve 100 times a second, and last well over 100,000 miles. When I was a kid with no money, we never replaced pistons or re bored an engine, and I never lost one to a broken ring.

Cleanliness, OTOH, is next to Godliness when it comes to engine internals. But I bolted together an old Volvo engine with a friend in an open shed during a wind storm, and the wind was whipping up the sand. You could see the scratch marks in the walls of the cylinders when we turned the crank, but it turned freely. We bolted it together anyway, much to my annoyance...

That sucker ran until the body rusted out from under it.
I could never have gotten away with that, but God loves fools and Good Old Boys.
My great uncle was a mechanic way back in the early days. He had a lot of interesting stories about what they bolted together and ran.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by DanielDudley

The pistons in your typical four cylinder engine will collectively rise and fall one million times in a thousand miles :::

Great story. I did basically the same with VW Aircooled engines when I was just out of High School.