Technical Doing a ring job the old way

The main downside I see is that while the engine is out, you'll want to do a lot more things that you don't really need to do, to fix the one main problem. Maybe if you're planning on putting a lot of miles on the car, that would be a plus. But if you just want to drive the car for a little while, and keep it "as is" as much as possible, it's not part of the plan.

 

I totally agree with you, except for that if the plan is never to make the car nice or redone, I just wouldn't rering it and would just deal with the oil consumption. As long as you have oil on hand and it doesn't foul the plugs or you let it run low on pressure, I just wouldn't get involved. For all you know the ridge on the cylinder walls may be so excessive that it continues to burn oil even after you rering it. We all know just throwing rings on is a half-assed, band-aid fix and omits the other half of the proper job of having it bored and installing new pistons.

If you're really burning a quart every 100 miles, which is a lot, that will be 100 quarts over the 10,000 miles you look to drive. If you get some good ol Walmart Supertech oil, straight SAE30 or 20/50, you're looking at $3 a quart. That's basically $300 to leave it alone over a decent amount of miles. As long as you've got good oil pressure and it's not fouling the plugs, and you don't want to go through it all the way, I'd leave it alone.

 

Naw even a badly worn engine will benefit from a new ring and hone job. and when you keep running a oil consuming engine it fouls plugs runs crappy and gets poor fuel economy. and pouring cheep oil makes the drink more oil faster. I once was called to fix a 10K D6 cat engine. this engine had been setting and was stuck. they freed it up and got it going. in a short time it began to get water in the oil. When I got there they had a brand new oil cooler setting there. A note telling me to change the oil cooler. My sons and I pulled the belly pan and oil pan. We pressurized the radiator. and shure enough water began seeping down from number 5 piston. We pulled the head and took out number 5 piston & sleeve. Yep electolisis had drilled a hole in the sleeve. We threaded a strand of fine wire thru the hole and attached a note telling we needed a set of liners and pistons. now this cat engine sounded good ran well. later when we pulled the remainder of the pistons number two had broken rings & ring lands. I suspect that was the cyl that had the engine locked up before they got it going again. It would have failed pretty soon. Back to Jonathan W the utube guy. his Packard in addition to stuck rings had two damaged pistons. If he had not decided to do a ring job and just drove it and pour oil in it. He might have ruined a rare 352 Packard engine. Squirrel might find a loose piston bushing or a bad piston ect? However I have confidence he will be successful in the end.

 

Except this type of repair has successfully been done many, many times over the years. Part of the problem with such an engine is also the deposits that have built up in the ring grooves and the ring lands. Cleaning up the deposits, installing new rings, and honing the cylinders, combines to make a big difference. It works, and works well. Roll in some new mains while you're at it, rebuild or replace the oil pump, lap the valves, and you can get tens of thousands of more good miles out of an engine. It has been done many times.

 

Yeah, I've been weighing the costs. I'm leaving it alone for now, but may decide to do rings eventually. I'm still working on getting an accurate feel for how much oil it uses, but it is quite a bit--my current best guess is a quart every 100 to 150 miles. I drove the car to little show in Douglas Sunday, that was about 100 miles round trip. It worked just fine. The oil level is quite a bit lower on the dipstick now. It has a 3 quart range between Full and Low, and I'm waiting for it to get back to Low before I add more.

 

I just put an OT car back on the road was using oil 1qt every 250 miles of so, I added some rislone yellow goo and bumped the oil viscosity up from 5w 20 to 5w 30 and oil usage has decreased to 1 qt every 3000 ...what weight are you running...I assume straight 30.

 

5w30 is in it.

 

Go to 15w40 Fleet oil. It is diesel rated, so it has a good lubrication package. Tractor Supply usually has a decent price. And it is available at "Blister-Pack-City" parts stores and Walmart.

 

Checked over on hetclub.com....15w-40 rotella seems to be a good choice one poster said original hudson grade was 10w-30? Did they have multiweight in 53?

 

manual says single grade, which one depends on operating temperature, 30 weight is the thickest they recommend.

But I don't do diesel oil in my cars. I guess I'm old fashioned

 

I have never used rotella either but it appeases angry zinc gods for some. I will say this...I bought a case of straight weight 30 royal purple for my garden tractor...uses a lot less oil now and runs quieter....than 10w 30. Some guys over at the Ford panther sites debate 5w20 vs 5w30...one guy said all they used in a fleet was 15w40 and even after 500,000 the 4.6 cyl walls had no wear still had cross hatch, Mains looked good too. He said a petroleum engineer told him thicker is always better except for gas mileage

 

been running 5W30 in my blown 427, it goes well over 1000 miles on a quart...hmmm...

That Edsel I put rings in a couple years ago went over 3k miles on a quart of 5W30

I think that oil doesn't make quite as much difference as most folks would like to think.

 

We used to use Valvoline in our gas burners. and shell in our diesel. then Valvoline took out the zinc so everything gets 15 w 40 rotellatt. My wifes ot Jeep grand Cherokee 6 cyl. goes 5000 miles and never gets below the full mark. and it has over a quarter million miles on the engine. never had even the valve cover off.

 

Earliest I remember was 1954. Phillips 66 multi grade

Ben

 

anyways....I had a few minutes, so I pulled the head off the Hudson. Interesting!

it's been rebuilt, the slugs are 20 over, and the bores are nice...except number 3, which is badly scored. Hmmm....

 

Broken rings perchance or a lump of carbon?

 

It appears that the pin that holds the rings in place, worked loose, and caused some mayhem.

Notice that the piston was knurled, also.

I measured the bore with the dial bore gauge, it's over 10 thou bigger than the piston where the rings travel, measuring front to back, but not so bad from side to side. Also the rings appear to be quite worn, even on the top and bottom, so it probably has a lot of miles on it, in addition to the locating pin coming out. Other pistons had quite a bit of oil on top of them, too.

I'll pull some more pistons tomorrow.

It only took about half an hour to get the pan out, didn't need to jack up the engine or anything, either. Someone had replaced the mounts, I guess that helps.

 

Something was definitely slapping around in there

 

Hone it and replace the rings. myself I don't like the pinned rings. Pinned rings are not necessary and just another thing that can possibly fail. I would do away with that feature. I would buy .030 rings and cut them to fit. and if the piston has excessive movement in the bore. place a shim behind the rings. After all its not a high RPM race engine. The goal is to curtail excessive oil consumption without spending high dollars.

 

X2 hone and replace the rings. I'd run 30 w this time. If you get to 500 miles per quart = winner.

 

Glaze breaker/ball hone and a set of rings will last quite awhile. I wouldn't worry about those scratches. I bet she would run good for quite awhile. And yes a fresh set of rings will do wonders for it. Lippy

 

Do what I call a "welfare motor". Dip the block/head in kerosene/diesel mix for a few days, and scrub everywhere you can reach, then repeat with solvent and dry. Remove the ridge with a reamer, replace the rings and bearings using file-to-fit rings. You already have the valve lapping experience. Heavy, single weight oil; really heavy, since you live in Arizona after all. Adjust the oil weight for the time of year. Probably more work than you really want, but it'll last a good while this way, unless something is really way out of spec. Change the oil/filter often, and recycle the used oil into another beater, or furnace/oil heater. Had a friend in high school with a 50 Pontiac, straight eight with a Hydra-Matic. We had to dip the block 1/2 at a time in a "55" gallon barrel; same with the head, crank, and cam (those big parts are heavy!). It still smoked a little when we were done, and he'd collect the oil from service station display/drain racks; all kinds of oil AND ATF went into that engine. He finally had to quit driving it after a County Sheriff's Deputy kept ticketing/harassing him after he started at the local community college; most of the smoke came from leaving a traffic light/stop sign, and there would be the cop sitting there. An "artist" friend had lettered the trailing ends of the front fenders with "GTO"; the block outline GTO lettering. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

There is no ridge, and after some more measuring, the #3 piston and bore are .030 over, while the rest are .020" over. The piston pin in #3 is pretty loose, and the piston is damaged, and just looks like it wants a new one--I called one of the Hudson parts suppliers, he thinks he has one, but not sure if he has the 20 over original type rings for the other 5 pistons.

I pulled #4 also, and it does not have the pins to align the rings--the bosses are there for them, but no holes drilled, even though the rings have the notches for them. Interesting.

There is one big scratch on #3 bore that I found after doing some honing, about 1/8" wide, as long as the ring travel, and one to two thousandths deep. I expect it will let some oil in, but hopefully not too much.

 

I never did this myself, but I have a valuable block that is pristine with the exception of one bore that had a longitudinal deep scratch in it, most likely caused by an incorrectly installed ring.
I talked to a lot of people about how I could do a repair without doing a complete rebuild, and one of the guys that built and raced stock cars, told me that they have used JB Weld to fix that type of damage. He stated that the cylinder does not get hot enough to damage the bond on the repair. He also stated that if the repair was to fail, the remains were soft enough not to do further damage to the cylinder.
I didn't have the nerve to do it, but I thought I would pass the tip on. I still have the block, but the repair isn't a priority right now.
The other thing I was thinking of doing, was to silver solder the score, and clean up the excess with a piece of matching old ring.
Bob

 

That scratch over time will build up with carbon. and the rings wear to fit the damaged bore. Since one cyl is already .030 just get a set of 30 over rings and cut them to fit. I would grind all the casting flash and polish & CC the combustion chambers in the flat head. That will lower the compression ratio a bit and make it run very smooth. I am looking foreward to when you get it back together. So we can tell the naysayers told you so!

 

I did some looking on the internet, and there were quite a few references to the JB Weld type of repair that I was referring to, so I am just posting one of the links.

Bob

 

Here is an even crazier one, where the guy has made a complete piston out of JB Weld.


Bob

 

I myself wouldn't use JB weld in a cyl. once I majored a JD 3 cyl gas engine. The cyl head was cracked rather badly and someone had ground it some and packed that groove with JB weld. took it to a auction and sold it. It was running perfect. My customer tried to use it on his farm and it very quickly failed let water on the piston and bent a rod. blew bubbles in the radiator and shot steam out the exhaust. We found a bare head and replacement rod. at Sikeston Mo. sleeves pistons gaskets & bearings from napa.

 

Can you knurl the #3 piston to make it a little tighter fit into the cylinder? It only needs 0.010 to tighten it up. Might help the rings be a bit more stable in the ring lands with less rocking??? I agree that longitudinal scratch is a "live with it for now" until a lot more serious engine rebuild is done. In the old days, a taper of 0.006-0.008 seemed to still have pretty good rering results; so i think a set of new rings, and cleaned up pistons and ring grooves will have you using a lot less oil. I think the suggestion to use std non-pinned rings is a good one.

 

The reason I want to replace #3 piston is the pin is really loose in it, and the ring locating pin also came out, and it has some ring land damage, and it's already been knurled, and it's just a scary looking piston right now.

I talked with a guy who sells Hudson parts exclusively, he's going to see if he has the stuff I need.