car craft dyno proven 12 hp and 15 ft lbs gain from a 434 hp@ 5700 450 lb-ft @4400 350. In the end it was getting 451 hp @5600 465 lb-ft @4,500. Thats prety good makes yout think twice about spending the extra cash for rings.

 

Sorry, but it'll take more than a Car Craft article to convince me that TS rings are any better than anyone elses gapped rings. I've seen more "0" gains and losses than I have gains from Total Seal rings when compared to a good Speed Pro, JE etc..

-Mindgame

 

In addition to excessive oil consumption.

Jody

 

Car Crafts motives are to please their advertisers. Take there tests with a grain of salt.

 

Ding Ding Ding Ding

The ring expands.. why dont people understand that

Here is what Greg Good said before about rings...

I'm going to assume that you're talking about gapless second rings. The only thing they do is make the leakdown look better and give a false sense of ring seal confidence. They actually hurt the way the top and oil rings are designed to work. A lot of people don't really understand how a ring package works and that is why gapless rings have been popular for so long. They just sound like they should work, so therefore people buy them.

You will always have a small amount of blowby in an engine. This is normal, and even necessary, for the ring package to work properly. Even if you had a gapless top ring, which ring designers are working on, you'll get some leakage across the ring face. The blowby that gets past the top ring travels to the oil ring through the gap in the second ring, then it goes into the pan through the holes or slots in the back of the ring groove, carrying oil with it that has been deposited there from the scraping action of the oil ring rails. This is how it is supposed to work. It's all about pressure differential above and below the oil ring. The higher the pressure differential between the oil pan and right above the oil ring, the better the oil ring works. The oil rings actually do not scrape all of the oil off the cylinder wall like many people think. If the blowby is stopped completely(gapless second rings), the engine can start oiling because the oil in the oil ring groove is not being emptied into the pan as efficiently as before because you don't have the leaked combustion gases flowing into the pan to empty the oil ring groove. Does this make any sense? In other words, it takes a small of "leakage", or airflow, to make the oil rings operate properly.

Gapless second rings can also hinder the way the top ring works. The top ring seals at the cylinder wall and on the bottom of the ring and the piston groove. If blowby is trapped between the top and second rings the top ring can be pushed up off the bottom of the ring groove and you lose your top ring seal.

I have an engine builder friend that a long time ago wanted to reduce ring drag (friction) on an engine he was building so he installed a second ring that was .030" undersize, 4.280" second ring on a 4.310" bore. It worked. The engine made good power and took less torque to turn over. It was also the driest engine(combustion chambers) he had ever built. We didn't know why at the time. The result of the undersize second ring gave him an end gap of about .090". A few years later at a Superflow engine conference in Denver this ring gap issue was explained by a Speed-Pro(now Federal Mogul)engineer. It then made sense then how a huge secong ring gap could dry up an engine(make oil rings work better). It works so well in fact that for a while International Harvester used .090" as spec for their gasoline truck engines. Most of the engine builders I know have since gone back to smaller second ring gaps but still run them larger than the top ring gap to prevent any combustion gases getting trapped between the top and second rings.

I know that there are engineers that have for some time been working on a gapless top ring. I heard awhile back that Childs & Albert or somebody else, I can't remember, was trying to do this and had a prototype. I don't really see the urgency for that though, and I'll tell you why. If you could get a gapless top ring to work, you would still have some leakage across the face of the ring. Besides, a little leakage is necesaary for the oil ring to work properly. The only benefit of a gapless ring, top or second, is that it makes the leakdown look good. There is one exception, an alcohol or nitromethane engine that is bad about contaminating the oil with fuel can benefit. A gapless second ring will reduce oil contamination in those engines. We don't have this problem with gasoline engines though.
When we leak down an engine the leakage we see is what the ring leaks at low temperature. This is not indicative of what is really happening while under power. The problem is that we are not leak testing the standard rings at the temperature at which they operate. If we could somehow leak test with the top rings at full operating temperature we would then see the real leakage of the top ring. The top rings leak the least when hot and the gapless rings leak good at any temperature. This is the main difference between them. When an engine is under full throtle there is a lot of cylinder temperature at that time and the ring gap shrinks up considerably, yeilding a much lower leakage rate. When the end gap on a top ring is sized correctly the gap will almost close during a power run, effectively making it an "almost gapless" ring with just a few thousandths of an inch clearance for insurance against the ends of the ring "butting" and causing cylinder wall and ring face damage. The leakge past this small, almost closed gap is negligible. I know savvy engine builders that can, through careful inspection and documentation during race engine rebuilds, incrementally reduce the top ring gap a little at a time and eventually get it to its smallest allowable dimension for THAT engine. It is not something that many of them stay with though because it doesn't yeild much power per man hour invested. There are greener pastures to find power in. Why hunt for squirrel when you can get a 6X6 elk for the same effort.


The thing that affects ring gap is heat. More power, more heat. Nitrous? Blower? More heat, bigger top ring gap. Running the top ring closer to the top of the piston? More heat, more gap. More cylinder temp requires more gap. Also, some cylinders run hotter than others and therefore the required minimum ring gap can be different for each cylinder.

 

Bravo SkarodoM!

Greg did an excellent job of explaining that topic, couldn't have said it better. I love it when I read something that hits home.


P

 

Thanks for the info from Greg Good, SkarodoM.

To be fair, Car Craft was testing a gapless top ring, not a second.

They also said many of the same things as Greg did. Probably attended the same AETC.

FWIW, I couldn't find ANY piston ring mfgr. ads in this issue of CC.

 

This info has been known for some time. (years) The rules change when the top ring becomes (as it should) the 'workhorse' in lieu of the second ring. Certainly, the narrower the operating temp range that the engine can be contained in, the less the urgency.

That statement can be summarized with it's last paragraph. Heat generated! With different operating conditions generating varying amounts of heat, hell, heat generated in different cylinders even varies, name one person on this planet (at this point in time anyhow) that can satisfy that requirement effectively, (i.e. the best gap for whatever condition encountered) with a fixed gap ring? Just one!

Also, to add this about the CC article. The article didn't mention/identify the manufacturer's name of the fixed gap ring, did it? Also note what end gap was used in the fixed gap second ring. Find that worth noting?

 

Instead of dancing around things.... why don't you just tell us what the article said.

I don't read Car Crap magazine.

-Mindgame

 

Well, what it amounts to, is that CC set up an engine with conventional ring set and TS gapless (top) ring set. As mentioned, gapless performed markedly better. However, I previously stated the the conventional ring set mfr. was not stated. Not true! The ring set (classic set) was supplied by TS. According to article, the gap for the 2nd ring (conventional set) was set at .014" and top at .018". I still find that odd, cuz TS should know better. Sealed Pwr. has been prescribing a wider 2nd ring gap for years, as well as oem. For the reasoning behind this, check Phil's post.

Many years ago, car mags were labeled comic books by some. Although, that being said, some mags had knowledgeable writers with good backrounds, also got grease under their finger nails. Some of these guys presented legitimate worthwhile info. Anyway, I hear ya, sometimes I don't care to dance either.

BTW MG, sent you an email.

 

I would like to see the dyno results after 10,000 miles to see what happens.

 

They did 3 dyno tests. The first was with a standard non file fit ring set that had many many dyno pulls. The rings were worn to a gap of .030. It had the worst leakdown and hp of the three as it should.

They did the second pull on a gapped set and yes it picked up power due to the rings closing almost fully.

The gapless performed the best and would most likely last the longest on the street.

I think top ring gapless sets are good technology if they can handle large amounts of heat.

 

Here is a quote that another engine builder I know uses, and for me it applies to the Total Seal Top Gappless rings....


" How did they work? "

" Well they work like $hit, I need 5 more sets........"

If that doesn't say enough, you didn't get it.

Bret

 

It’s too damn bad you really have to read between the lines of magazines as they walk a tightrope of making the readers happy with interesting material and making the sponsors happy with interesting results that sells parts.

I personally learned to be somewhat leery of the magazines when I had a personal car featured in Motor Trend. Ro Mcgonnal (current editor in chief of Road & Track I believe) borrowed my CarTech (Corky Bell) Turbo Supra for a day. It certainly was powerful for a car of it time, but had not been actually dynoed tested nor did he even ask me what the car did at the track. Also it was a Wednsday and there were no local tracks open in the middle of the day to do any testing.

I read later that the car made over 500 hp and that it ran 11’s. Had all kinds of hp levels for different boost levels and all kinds of 0-60mph times at different boost levels.

Well…. The only time it was at a strip, it only ran low 13’s on street tires @118mph. Why only low 13’s? It had a super stiff road racing suspension and was lowered 2”. Cornered pretty neat when it finally got moving, but a small ci turbo with a stiff suspension is not the easiest car to 60’ or do a 0-60mph. 60-120mph? yah doggy....... it was fast!

I was rather flattered and still brag about the article, but I also know none of it was based in facts.

 

SStrokerAce

I didn't get it.

Are you saying they really don't work but the customers want them so you'll make money anyway?

Or, They actually do work but you don't want eveyone to know but immediatelly order more?

Yeah, Nay, or other............I'm slow.