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Great thread with lots of detail. Looking forward to following your rebuild and seeing all the photos

Good luck - you're going about this the right way!

 

FYI for those who haven't heard anything on the poor seating
of chrome rings, Trainwreackinseattle is pursuing research on a current dedicated thread at:

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...ealing-215113/

Until I hear more, I will be avoiding chrome rings.

*thoughts* besides ring clocking/seating issues, I wonder if the bent wasn't seating and causing other issues, BUT it wasn't THAT bent

@ yotazenmanic: read more of this thread. pistons pulled a few posts before yours.

@ americanmcss: I have not contacted yet. I plan on renting tools this weekend for piston clearance.
Thats the final measurement for me, and I will contact them once i know if i need to report another problem or not.

@ flyingbrass: source on those 90 degree articles. Interesting stuff. I could understand a little float to rings settling, but I think these are not even close to excusable.

 

Pretty sure the pistons have been pulled already...and if you look at the pictures it will show that the rings werent spaced properly.

 

Dropped the head off at the machine shop today. Probably get it back tomorrow. If it comes back all pretty and clean, I will post pics.

Since I couldn't find the tools to do it, I will have the shop spec the block and pistons and give the cylinders a quick hone.

Again:
Any input on what ring brand/type you guys have used would be much appreciated. Ive heard good things about NPR.

 

To my oh so professional eyes....

Is the gap between the rings a bit large, IE the two ends seem 1/2' or so apart, I seem to remember the ring ends on my pistons to be a bit closer together:dunno

Repo

 

Here are the rings:

Top ring:


2nd ring:


Any guesses on material? I'm curious if i was also dealing with "chrome" rings.


Got the head from the shop yesterday! Pics as promised!


new steam and seal 2nd from bottom on right side!
a little shorter then the rest, but I can't see that making a difference.


A little carbon in the ports, maybe some time with a brush is needed, But nice and clean!


And new valve, on the left of the old one:

 

Grab one of the old rings and pull it apart. the chromoly rings bend pretty good and the cast iron ones will snap very easily. I see you marked an arrow on which way goes forward on the piston. All the notches face forward for future reference. Look at the front of the piston and rod and you will see the notches I'm talking about. Looks pretty good so far. Hope it works better for you this time. I honed each cylinder three times and got a really nice looking cross hatch going on each one. I have about 3000 miles since I started driving it and it is doing great. I think they just need more honing to get a good seat.

 

Your talking about chrome? what brand did you use? I'm think NPR which uses a moly top and a cast 2nd. What kind of material did you use for the hone?

 

Yeah it was late when i marked those pistons, and noticed the notch the next day. haha. Good eye

 

at first i was considering a badly done head job, oil leaking into cylinder...

man was i wrong. this thread is a very nice guide of everything -not- to do when rebuilding an engine.

maybe it needs a sticky, or a link in the HOWTOs section of stickies.

i'm subscribed and think it will be interesting how many things you find wrong. good luck. :-)

(my first rebuild smoked like a tar kettle for 4-5 miles, ran horribly, then cleared up and smoothed out for another 140,000 miles.... in a mazda )

 

okay, can i fire up the debate about head gaskets?

so which ones do you guys prefer and why?

OEM Toyota vs Steel (like corteco).

 

Nice project you got going on here

I've never used the corteco gaskets, but I hear they are good. 22reperformance.com claims "We have found this (Corteco) head gasket to outperform even the OEM factory gasket. We use this gasket on all of our Stage 1 through Stage 3 engines.
We even use this gasket (with ARP head studs) on 15psi turbocharged engines."

About your ring dilemma, just go with Engnbldr. Rock doesn't make anything, they simply repackage for NPR which is OE. Not saying anything against anyone but I feel that if people are having issues with OE rings seating, it was most likely due to the honing process.

 

I don't remember what brand I used that didn't seat. I've always used a snap-on 3-leg honer that was given to my by my uncle. He was a master mechanic for Toyota of Slidell LA for years. The first engine I had problems with the rings seating was in my old 85' ext. cab. At the time my uncle was still working at the Toyota shop and one weekend I actually towed my truck with a blown head gasket to Slidell. We pulled the engine and used ALL Toyota parts off the shelf of the shop "He got me a really good discount" We used the Toyota brand hone that was in the shop which was the kind with a lot of wires coming off of it. The hone looked great to me but I was like 15 at the time so who knows. He did most of the work and I learned... Anyway we put the engine back in the truck and I drove it home on Sun. The next week it was smoking and spitting out little black dots out of the exhaust. I drove it back there and he said the rings didn't seat. Another mechanic and him put a piece of cardboard in front of the radiator to make it get hot. They said the chrome-moly rings needed to get hot to seat some times. That didn't work. So we pulled the engine and I drove to auto zone and bought the cheapest iron rings they had. By the time I got back there were 3 Toyota mechanics working together and already had the engine apart. We put in the new rings and put it back in and as soon as it fired up I could tell the difference. NO smoke or dots. I drove the truck back and forth to college for years before I sold it. So I don't really think that it has to do with brands or honing because I have seen it happen using Toyota parts and specialty tools.

 

Hmmm that story sort of confirms it though, OE rings were in it that sealed, same OE rings went in it, something was different in the installation/and or honing process, and they didn't seat.

Cast rings will seat even if Hellen Keller did the honing.

BTW how long did you drive it for? I would give chrome rings at least 1K before I would accept the fact that they didn't seat.

 

Close to 1k miles. At the time I was dual enrolled to USM and drove back and forth every day when I got out of high school. So it was about 175 miles a day for a week, plus the trip to and from Slidell and any around town driving. It would spit so much black "soot" out when it was rev'd it would leave a mark on the ground. I could tell where I was at stop lights the day before.... The mechanics that worked on it were all certified toyota master mechanics so I know it was done correctly. I mean we were in a toyota shop with all kinds of toyota specialty tools and everything. They didn't really explain to me why but they just said "it happens..."

 

Yeah there are many factors that can cause rings not to seat, its hard to say what went wrong and where. Could have been a bad set of rings, or something was overlooked somewhere. To bad you sold that thing!

 

Great stuff. Considering all the mixed stories, putting cast rings seems pretty tempting. Since usually timing chain need replacement around 100k, and head gaskets usually 100k, then just put in new rings at @100k with the head off, but, is it possible: to remove/install pistons w/o pulling the engine?

 

PismoJoe: how far away you estimate till you start your 86 up? I'm interested to hear about the rock rings. what hone process did you do?

 

You could pull the pistons w/o pulling the engine, but if you have 4wd taking off that oil pan is more of a hassle than just pulling the engine and throwing it on a stand so everything is laid out nicely in front of you to work on.

My 22RE had 230k on the clock, stock rings, head, timing was done on it once, other than that bone stock. Didn't use oil, ran great! HG looked like it was from the beginning though, probably could have slapped a HG on there and gone a bit more, but if you check out pg 1 of my build, the deck of my block was badly corroded, and definitely needed to be decked.

That's the thing about chrome rings though, they take longer to seat but they last far longer than cast rings. They are also better for dirty conditions, which is a plus for me since I'm in the dirt a lot. If you do it right, you shouldn't need to replace the rings until your next rebuild, somewhere around 300k later if everything is done right and you maintain it. These engine's really don't need anything at 100k besides the timing done, and maybe some vacuum port cleaning. That's just me though, I'm an OE kind of guy. Whatever rings my 22RE came with, I'm putting the same ones right back in.

I would say I'm about a month away from firing her up, I'm OCD on this thing, so I'm going through everything. I really want to build a quality engine that I won't have to worry about for another 24 years

 

So OE rings were chrome?