I should have been clearer, I meant getting new rings?
All I know so far is that I should use moly rings with my little engine.
Build Thread 1978 Mercury Cyclone. The pig is in the pen.
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All I know so far is that I should use moly rings with my little engine.
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Dave, Dave, Dave.......You were at my house...I watched you.
You're a social media addict. You were takin pictures, posting updates to all your BFF's and car homies in real time..I literally had to hide from your constant photo ops.
For somebody so in touch with the "here and now", how did you miss both updates where I said what rings I had, and linked what my only purchase option was?.....
Get on the stick Dave.....Geeze!
Because of my unorthodox ring lands...( 1.5mm/1.5mm/3mm) I'm forced to buy another set of the same ones I currently have at the minimum..iron top, w/plasma moly face, iron second, ss low tension oil rings.
I could get stupid, and buy some tool steel, or stainless set, but I don't make that much power to justify that purchase. There is another set out there called Hellfire, which I think is a race set as well,..again, not for the street car status the monster lives in.
I'm reading fast before having to go, and maybe I missed this. You're what, around 2 months after the 'procedure'. How are the knees holding up buddy? I am sure you had to up-down a time or two to get that iron slug out. It looks to me like you have the chance to improve the fit and finish of things. I have an out door bar top and grill center I built a couple of years ago, that I know if I did today, would be SOOO much better. It's like as soon as I get something done, I see all the little problems and know how I could do it better the next time. I think must of us are that way on our cars. We either want to start fixing what we fixed or we sell it and start over!
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3.5 months past the day of the surgery. I'm getting better, but I'd say that I'm only at 65% of full usage. The left knee won't bend anywhere near what the right one will. Both stiffen if I sit too long, both swell if I stand too long.
Working on the car is pretty funny to watch. I cannot put a knee down to get on the ground, or get up. So I do like a dog does ( appropriate, since dogs don't have knees) I have to bend over, put my hands down first, then swing my butt under me and sit, then I can lay down. When I get up, I sit first, then spin a leg and stand up on it.
After several hours of that, and the hyper-extension that comes from having to reach into the middle of the engine compartment from above,..the knees get pretty pissed at my by the end of it.
But,...some ice, some elevation, an 800 mg ibuprofen, and maybe a rocks glass filled with Jameson...all bring me back to a state of normalcy real quick.
Glad to see your progess, Mike. At least when your set up is all together, you dont see much of the bay so your paint doesnt need to be perfect. I contemplated redoing my strut tower when I scratched it lowering in my engine, but the intake tract covers it so I painted over the scratch instead. Not sure if that woukd sit right in your head, but it does mine, lol.
HotFox
15 Year Member
? Waiting impatiently
!
HotFox
15 Year Member
Could he have dropped a piston and rod on one of his knees? Ouch! I can hear him yell all the way from Michigan! Winter is coming!
Well,.......Hell.
The immediate take away from this update is that I basically took apart a healthy engine.
The engine is 90% apart now, and save for one small piece of embedded dirt leaving the tiniest of scratches in a rod bearing,....this is one of the cleanest engines I've ever taken back apart.
The bearings are absolutely perfect. I can see nothing on the rings that would lead me to believe that the engine has ever seen one split second of detonation.
At least I think this looks good albeit that the crank radius is a little tight.
The journal surfaces are perfect.
This is piston 5. The worst offender as far as leakage goes. The only thing weird about this piston was the effort that it took to remove it. All of the pistons could be pushed out w/ my fingers only,...except this one. I still pushed it out by fingers only, but I still got a dent in my thumb where the rod bolt has left an impression. Getting the cap seperated took alot more effort too. ( All just a bunch of non-relevant mumbo-jumbo I'm sure)
For the three cylinders that were low, it can only mean one thing.....I gapped them too big. (I suck at ring sizing, I'm not ashamed to admit...I probably gapped them all too big, but must've really sucked w/ the three that leaked so bad.)
If there was ever a more glaring need for a gapless ring set,..I'm the poster child for that.
Once the pan was off, I expected to see some kind of metal carnage attached to the three mega-magnets that were in the bottom of the pan,....and they were thickly coated in a pasty fungoo that I can only surmise that was break in funk coming off of the cylinders at first start up. Kinda looked like black graphite between your fingers. Nothing shiny.
the pan rusted like mad while the engine sat waiting on it's first oil fill...I'll have to treat the thing to an acid wash, then apply a light coat of oil to keep it clean this time around.
The "three wise men" magnets with obvious funk still attached. this is after a wipe down...just to get them clean enough to stick on a place out of the way to store them. getting them off the bottom of the pan was a chore..they stick like mad.
I'm really conflicted about using the "Right stuff" as a gasket maker. It sticks so hard that it's next to impossible some times to get the stuck together parts apart. The side cover that allows access to the lifter galley was stuck so hard, that it broke the epoxy holding the steel plate that extends the deck.
Again, this is just to reinforce the side of the block where I had to grind the lifter galley open big enough to get the pushrods to clear..so it really isn't that big a deal. But I could not get the plate, or the intake manifold off w/o having to beat a screwdriver between the intake and the head, and the plate and the block where it actually damaged the aluminum, and broke the epoxy seal...
It should be called..."The Too Tight Stuff"
And here we have the 6 little twins....waiting on their liberty...
I was gonna send the cam off and have it tamed down if I ever took the engine this far apart so the valvetrain wont be so noisy, but that'll force a different set of valve springs...And I ain't spending that money now.
Besides..... Noisy or not,....this cam makes 19" of vacuum at idle, boost at 2500 RPM, and at 30% throttle. If there was ever a more perfect grind, I don't know what is......I'm thinkin that ill leave it.
The one glaring thing that I'll get to fix is the hideous engine paint. When I painted this thing black, I did it in the car, and the K member obscured a lot of access to nooks and crannies. This time around I'll go for the mega-detail...and.....
Well,....you'll just have to wait and see.
The immediate take away from this update is that I basically took apart a healthy engine.
The engine is 90% apart now, and save for one small piece of embedded dirt leaving the tiniest of scratches in a rod bearing,....this is one of the cleanest engines I've ever taken back apart.
The bearings are absolutely perfect. I can see nothing on the rings that would lead me to believe that the engine has ever seen one split second of detonation.
At least I think this looks good albeit that the crank radius is a little tight.
The journal surfaces are perfect.
This is piston 5. The worst offender as far as leakage goes. The only thing weird about this piston was the effort that it took to remove it. All of the pistons could be pushed out w/ my fingers only,...except this one. I still pushed it out by fingers only, but I still got a dent in my thumb where the rod bolt has left an impression. Getting the cap seperated took alot more effort too. ( All just a bunch of non-relevant mumbo-jumbo I'm sure)
For the three cylinders that were low, it can only mean one thing.....I gapped them too big. (I suck at ring sizing, I'm not ashamed to admit...I probably gapped them all too big, but must've really sucked w/ the three that leaked so bad.)
If there was ever a more glaring need for a gapless ring set,..I'm the poster child for that.
Once the pan was off, I expected to see some kind of metal carnage attached to the three mega-magnets that were in the bottom of the pan,....and they were thickly coated in a pasty fungoo that I can only surmise that was break in funk coming off of the cylinders at first start up. Kinda looked like black graphite between your fingers. Nothing shiny.
the pan rusted like mad while the engine sat waiting on it's first oil fill...I'll have to treat the thing to an acid wash, then apply a light coat of oil to keep it clean this time around.
The "three wise men" magnets with obvious funk still attached. this is after a wipe down...just to get them clean enough to stick on a place out of the way to store them. getting them off the bottom of the pan was a chore..they stick like mad.
I'm really conflicted about using the "Right stuff" as a gasket maker. It sticks so hard that it's next to impossible some times to get the stuck together parts apart. The side cover that allows access to the lifter galley was stuck so hard, that it broke the epoxy holding the steel plate that extends the deck.
Again, this is just to reinforce the side of the block where I had to grind the lifter galley open big enough to get the pushrods to clear..so it really isn't that big a deal. But I could not get the plate, or the intake manifold off w/o having to beat a screwdriver between the intake and the head, and the plate and the block where it actually damaged the aluminum, and broke the epoxy seal...
It should be called..."The Too Tight Stuff"
And here we have the 6 little twins....waiting on their liberty...
I was gonna send the cam off and have it tamed down if I ever took the engine this far apart so the valvetrain wont be so noisy, but that'll force a different set of valve springs...And I ain't spending that money now.
Besides..... Noisy or not,....this cam makes 19" of vacuum at idle, boost at 2500 RPM, and at 30% throttle. If there was ever a more perfect grind, I don't know what is......I'm thinkin that ill leave it.
The one glaring thing that I'll get to fix is the hideous engine paint. When I painted this thing black, I did it in the car, and the K member obscured a lot of access to nooks and crannies. This time around I'll go for the mega-detail...and.....
Well,....you'll just have to wait and see.
That a kid. I think the engine noise is just part of the theme of the car. Its a Monster, it should sound like one. If the cam works well aside from the noise, I would spend the regrind $ on sound deadener for under the hood and firewall.
Glad to see its so clean coming apart. Looks like you might actually know what youre doing?
Glad to see its so clean coming apart. Looks like you might actually know what youre doing?
HotFox
15 Year Member
Check your axial or gap clearance.
Do you see even shadow along the barrel face of the ring all the way around? There should be a dark shadow about half the ring where it is making contact with the cylinder. It should be consistent all the way around the ring.
Do you see even shadow along the barrel face of the ring all the way around? There should be a dark shadow about half the ring where it is making contact with the cylinder. It should be consistent all the way around the ring.
I'm not sure I'm understanding what youre asking/ telling me to look at, and how you're seeing anything from the pic I took.
Are you telling me to check the ring end gap?
HotFox
15 Year Member
Maybe use a parting agent for the reinstall? Even a thin layer of (enter your favorite engine silicon sealant here) would allow it to be disassembled.
stangboy
Founding Member
So the only thing that was really "wrong" with the engine was the ring gaps and not so much the rings themselves? So are we thinking it could have survived more boost if you wouldn't have decided to do a refresh?
Well, better safe than sorry.
Well, better safe than sorry.
Agai
I wanted to correct the blow by...and there's always been the un-easy feeling that there was something wrong/ broken that was causing that, coupled to not knowing if I had somehow managed to dump metal shavings in the engine somewhere.
( I did grind on the assembled engine).
Now I know its good, I'm gonna be diligent with this rebuild, with a goal of single digit blow by numbers this time around.
Again, the engine is healthy. The tune was right for probably upwards of 15 psi after the water meth got added.
I wanted to correct the blow by...and there's always been the un-easy feeling that there was something wrong/ broken that was causing that, coupled to not knowing if I had somehow managed to dump metal shavings in the engine somewhere.
( I did grind on the assembled engine).
Now I know its good, I'm gonna be diligent with this rebuild, with a goal of single digit blow by numbers this time around.
It's cool that it didn't have any real major issues.
Ring gap though? Don't you just check that by slipping a ring into the bore? Maybe i'm oversimplifying it.
Ring gap though? Don't you just check that by slipping a ring into the bore? Maybe i'm oversimplifying it.
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