Piston ring suggestions

hotrodcbx

Senior Member
My '34 Coupe has a MCF (Mark Kirby) built engine built in the mid '90's. It has been a great engine with 25,000 miles and great power Unfortunately the blower drive pulley beat the key way to pieces in the crank. My crankshaft guy said he could rebuild the crank snout but upon magnafluxing it showed cracks. I have purchased a new crank but have decided to do a complete refresh, including new piston rings, the bearings checked out fine. I believe Mark installed Perfect Circle chrome rings. The engine has 286". Potvin cam and B&M blower, about 5 lbs boost. The bore checks out OK but will be honed. Any suggestions on make and type of rings would be appreciated.. Thanks Guys...
 
Ring availability will be determined by the size of your bores and the corresponding ring grooves in the pistons. My guess is that it will use standard ring sizes from "back in the day", so you'll not have many options - other than cast iron rings like Hastings, etc.. Now days I only use 1.5, 1.5, 3.0 mm metric rings - just so much better than the old Hastings/Grant stuff we all used to run . . . but you'd have to have new pistons to use these newer ring packages. If you have trouble finding rings, consider going to a new Ross piston with metric rings . . . is the way to go today.
 
For that little boost you don´t need anything exotic for rings...
The need for stainless and coating comes when you start using exotic fuels and nitrous.
Get the rings before you hone...if you descide to go with coated rings they want a different finish of cylinderwall.
 
For that little boost you don´t need anything exotic for rings...
The need for stainless and coating comes when you start using exotic fuels and nitrous.
Get the rings before you hone...if you descide to go with coated rings they want a different finish of cylinderwall.

Don't forget that supercharged engines need a little extra end gap on the rings.
 
Ring availability will be determined by the size of your bores and the corresponding ring grooves in the pistons. My guess is that it will use standard ring sizes from "back in the day", so you'll not have many options - other than cast iron rings like Hastings, etc.. Now days I only use 1.5, 1.5, 3.0 mm metric rings - just so much better than the old Hastings/Grant stuff we all used to run . . . but you'd have to have new pistons to use these newer ring packages. If you have trouble finding rings, consider going to a new Ross piston with metric rings . . . is the way to go today.


One nice thing about Ross and I'm sure others (Wisco, Arias, etc.), is that you can order a piston to the size needed, not the size they have in stock.

Meaning, if a honing will do it, great. If the honing takes off more than you had hoped, you can get pistons the correct size instead of having to bore to make perfect.

For Ross, it took 4 weeks from ordering to delivery to have a set of custom made pistons shipped to the builder.

For older, cast style rings, I would call Egge. If they don't have them, I'm sure they can direct you to how does.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I think for this mild rebuild I will stick with replacement cast rings for the existing pistons and verify the end gaps and do a 240 hone. The only reason I got into this was due to the blower drive pulley and the engine always performed great. Having said that, I am currently building a flathead for my '33 roadster which will see Ross pistons with metric rings.
 
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