Four ring piston?

[burner31]

Just pulled my pistons, found these. Anyone have info on this? Assumed they would be normal three ring pistons. These are 080 over, where can I get rings for these?
And is this normal?

 

[burner31]

Here's the pic

 

[burner31]

A better picture

 

[jetmek]

Old replacement style piston. New piston and rings arent expensive

 

[ursus]

From the photo it looks like there are only 3 groves in the piston. The older pistons typically used a built up oil control ring assembly that was like a sandwich composed of two thin rings with a spacer in the middle.

4-ring replacement pistons were once used in the flathead V-8 engines with the idea that it would help reduce oil blowby, albeit with some power loss due to the additional friction. Many builders would toss out the extra ring and simply run them with the usual 3 rings.

 

[burner31]

Thank you gentlemen, (Jetmek, Ursus)
Now it makes a little more sense

 

[PC/SR]

Does not appear to be 4 rings. Chrysler Corp cars had 4 rings back in the day. 2 compression, 2 oil rings.

 

[kenparker0703]

Looks like 4 rings to me. I had a set of pistons like that, came out of an engine rebuilt (shade tree) in the 1960's, Pistons went ot the scrap yard, ordered new ones.

 

[Hoovercw]

I had those in a rebuilt from Sears. Made by Sterling I believe. One of mine broke upon disassembly so I had to get a regular set. One of the gurus around here told me to leave the fourth groove empty if I was going to reuse them. His words were "snake oil design" to reduce oil consumption.