End Gap Mistakes That Will RUIN Your Engine

in gap the number one most asked question what's my in-gap be well we've got Jimmy Barton here to give you the answer so stay tuned [Music] in gap it is the most frequently Asked question and now there is a chart that comes with all the rings that says what you should do but I know there's more to the story so help us out well that's a guidance point the top end Gap is set basically whether it's a normally aspirated motor or it's a power Adder motor what type of power outer motor that boosts nitrous makes a difference and what type of pistons in it that's right because a hypereutectic piston yeah is going to be hotter because it holds so much more heat and they recommend a much higher ring Gap if you're using that piston you've got to go by what they recommend exactly other than that it's based purely on experience that chart is a guideline and you need to go by but always remember looser won't get you in trouble tighter will and that's the question we get right is how tight should it be in my experience they overthink tightness they try to make it too tight because they're worried that they give up a couple thousands of then Gap they're going to give up three or four CFM a blow-by and I just don't I don't see it in my experience I don't see it either and I've run them all the way down to where I could actually see the grind marks on the opposite side of the ring and a few times in the past 40 years I've actually butted a ring and destroyed the cylinder right and that's never good you find out where the limit is you back up from there I said a little extra Gap doesn't really appear Gap will not kill you it's just like getting a bearing clearance too tight it's same as a ring if you get it too tight it's going to hurt something a little bit loose is not going to hurt it it won't help it but it's not going to hurt it since it's margin of error the tighter you get it the less margin of error you have with your tune up and operating environment because that's kind of the key is it really is the operating environment and it's going to dictate a lot of this and you can have this end Gap perfect for for a 900 degree cylinder or combustion temperature such as alcohol or something but if that cylinder temperature gets to 1200 degrees you better have a little extra in there to compensate for it or it's going to button ring and when it does it tears stuff up because really what we're saying is it's really about cylinder temperature yes and that's where load really plays a big difference and what I think one of your best analogies is the difference between you know a small block Chevy or even a big block Chevy in a boat versus a drag car they're two totally different things yeah a drag car even if it's a drag boat the only thing out there with high gear only right now is a top fuel car right but if you're in a boat that's all you got high gear only and it's just like loading it against the dyno without pushing the feed button yeah you're just letting it sit there because that that's all you're doing and the only gear ratio in that boat is the prop depending on which one you put on it and it never changes to the higher the load the more you get the more heat you get on the Piston so the more in gap you need to compensate for it yes and it's just like a turbo motor it's going to have more heat than a normally aspirated motor just because there's more boost there's more combustion temperature right it's the same thing on a diesel motor like some of these racing Cummins engines with all this boost on them I mean they have to have huge end gaps on them because the Piston don't get so hot and it's such a high compression ratio and if you put one into detonation all bets are off then oh yeah exactly because then the temperature the combustion temperature goes out of sight yeah really can't help that that's another problem you got to deal with so okay that's top end Gap tell them a little bit about what we've seen with second ring in gap and the top oil rail in gap because that's something that almost no one ever talks about but is really important is the end gap on that top oil rail as well well let's use for an example a blower motor okay I have a Nostalgia car that has a 427 in it the top end gap on that motor because it's a field block has no water in it top end gap on that motor is 36 000. and you know what more size is that it's like a 4 2 85 right okay or something like that and the second in gap should be quite a bit more than that I mean I've got an extreme on my motor but it just shows you that it and the reason it's so extreme is I couldn't get a ring closer to the board than what I wound up with right because it just wasn't available so my second ring actually has an eighth of an inch on it 125 000. wow but when you got a blower on alcohol of course you don't have the cylinder temperature you do on gasoline but true you're still going to have blow by if you've got a severely over driven blower so even though I have 125 on the second ring the motor has very little blow by right so the second ring is the only acting as a scraper now yeah 80 of the second Ring's job is actually to be oil control 20 of it's actually sealing and because they're offset they're not lined up right that top Gap doesn't get to see that 125 000 directly right now because I have that big a second in gap I open the top o-ring rail up to give it a pass for anything that goes by it to go into the pan exactly and you still don't see it and you only need to open the top ring because it gets into the oil return holes then Bingo because that's the thing in that oil return groove right the oil ring Groove there's holes where the oil can drain back into the sump and that's the key is you want to give it that pass so that this pressure up here can get that gets by that top ring can get past the second ring and get into or in Groove and go out that oil return hole back to the sump so on the bottom ring I like say between 15 and 20 thousands okay that'll work on pretty much anything right and that's pretty much standard I think even the instructions from total sales 15. when you get a huge bore like a four 650 or something like that you may need a little more but it's it's very minimal theoretically my motor aside I would want the second ring to always be bigger than the top because if you trap the gas between the top and second it can it will push the top ring off the seat at some point yeah and same thing is you need to o-ring the top o-ring to be marginally bigger or at least the same size as the second ring so they can so they'll have that balance of flow I know the Rings are supposed to seal the gases in the cylinders but nothing seals 100 nothing seals a hundred percent and if you trap the gas between the Rings it will upset the ring seal exactly and that's where you get all your ring flutter from and we saw that on the engine Dyno when we were doing some oil development stuff we saw that at that higher engine RPM what made the biggest difference in increasing power not really increasing power but just not losing power I've actually been doing this on the engines that I used to build for probably five or six years and it really helped the top end power on the motor yeah to keep it from nosing over after Peak power yeah stabilize the time to stabilize the top end and for many years I tried to keep it a secret you can only keep an advantage for so long in this business because it gets out oh yeah you know somebody else will get your motor and take it apart and just like when I tear somebody else's motor apart I want to see if I can learn anything exactly well other engine builders have tore my engines apart and have asked the question why I did that yeah and there's one thing about me I'll either tell you the truth or I won't tell you there you go exactly that's actually pretty kind actually right some people will tell you the wrong direction totally so just being silent or telling you the truth is actually a pretty nice gift that's true with anything that I'm asked I'll either tell you the truth or I'll just tell you I can't tell you I just remember seeing it when we first started doing it it's like wow that made a big difference in stable and it makes sense when you think about it at higher RPM you know past Peak torque there's less cylinder pressure to keep that top ring seated so now that differential and pressure between that second ring and the top ring sees makes it easier to unseat that top ring and with top ring gun seats yeah goes up power goes down it's not necessarily unseating that from the cylinder wall no it's all it is is it's pushing it up off the bottom of the Ring Bingo it's not like you're blowing it off the cylinder wall no you're just pushing it up building enough pressure between the first and second they get the Wrangle raise off the ring land and then then it doesn't seal right exactly that's why a lot of the Pistons have a a bevel at the top on the top ring that goes to the top is because when the combustion goes behind the ring it blows it against the cylinder wall just like same Principle as a gas Port exactly but on a street motor you don't run you run about one three to one five on the width of the ring and where on the race motors we get down to four and five and six tenths because they got gas ports on them right and of course then you get into all kinds of Coatings and stuff to keep the Rings from sticking or welding but that's a different story right the general idea is you want that second end Gap wider so that you can let that gas pressure get down then you want to match that end Gap with the top oil rail so that it can get down into the oil ring Groove and be able to get through those o-ring hole or the oil return holes to get to the sump and there's not a set number on it if it's a wet sump motor with no vacuum on it you can open it up really pretty wide yeah 20 30 000 is bigger don't hurt a thing yeah okay well I know on the engine performance Expo engine that's a wet sump engine yeah uh because it's boosted and everything we ran 32 000 on the top ring I believe yeah and I think we ran 50 on the second yeah we did and we opened that oil rail up that much too we opened the oil rail up to at least 50. yeah the bottom rail was tight yep as for what it was but now that being said if you've got a dry sump motor this open air you can still do that but if you've got something that's got a vacuum pump on it a drag race motor a round track motor that has a vacuum pump on it you don't want to open it up quite as much yeah because now it's just going to be too much still needs to be a little bigger than the top marine and the O-ring still needs to be bigger than a second ring but you don't want that eighth of an inch Gap like I got in my drag car because you're not you're going to lose part of your vacuum yeah even though you got good seals and all it'll it'll suck by the Rings through the Gap yeah so tighten it up now a little bit if you're running vacuum and if you're pulling big vacuum it doesn't hurt nothing to have the total seal top ring yeah it can pull a lot more vacuum here if you're pulling vacuum yes out I have no problem with that whatsoever so there it actually works best in that application well in my experience right if you're going to run that Gap with top ring that's where having a big vacuum system to make a big difference everything's a little different you know the Marine engines are different from the drag Motors the dirt engines are different from the asphalt engines yep because they ingest there's no way you can keep the cylinders clean no no there's dirt I mean there's just I don't care how good a filter you got on it now there's going to be just sand and stuff that gets in there and it's going to wear on the cylinders it's going to wear the Rings it's just going to happen yeah you can run a tool steel or a stainless top ring in it and not wearing a ring but it's going to wear to ring land because it's going to get stuff in between it it's just right there's a shorter rebuild time on the dirt Motors just because of the dirt oh yeah think about it Tim can what they've said all along the number one reason for a bearing failure of air rolling bearing or a plane bearing is dirt it's contamination so you're running in a dirty environment by necessity you're going to have a shorter operating life because it's a dirtier environment well the trick to that is lead to race that does help it helps a lot hopefully this little segment here gave you some answers to kind of give you some perspective on what your top end Gap should be how to think about a second in gap and take advantage of the little trick of setting your oil rail Gap as well the big thing is just make sure that second ring is bigger than the top and the top oil rail is at least equal to the second and don't make them too tight you heard it you heard it from the man he's been 277 miles an hour at Bonneville so you should listen to him thank you

Channel: Total Seal Piston Rings

Views: 310,058

Keywords: BMW, Chevy, Drag Racing, Engine Power, Engines, F1, Ford, HEMI, Honda, LS2, LS6, LS7, Mopar, Motorsports, NASCAR, Nissan, Nitrous, Porsche, Racing, Road Racing, Turbocharged, end gap, gapping rings, how to gap piston rings, increased horsepower, installing piston rings, lake speed jr, piston ring, piston ring gap, piston ring gap clearance, piston ring installation, piston ring setting, piston rings, pistons, racing engines, ring gap, ring gap clearance, total seal, total seal piston rings

Id: _NxFRoN-Qok

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023