OK it took me a while to check back in and I just caught this thread.

There is some scary stuff here and I think I'm just missing parts of the discussion somewhere.

Please tell me I am missing something from another post - - and that you are not hand sanding a cylinder with a chunk of sandpaper. Don't do that. Bottle brushes and flex hones are not really worth much. You need a rigid hone to change cylinder geometry. But at least they don't usually hurt things. Sandpaper by hand has the potential to hurt...a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40 are OK to clean off carbon from the area above the ring belt.

That piston would work but you paid for perfect parts and thats what you should get. Those "cheap" wrist pin clips are exactly what the piston was machined to use. They work perfectly. The lock grooves are round in cross section to match. If you put anything else in there it will fail. I promise.

Moly can be applied to rings in several processes. On cast iron they use mechanical (pressed into the groove - Grant rings), they can use a welding type process, or it can be sprayed on through a plasma-arc. On a steel or ductile iron ring only the plasma process will work. Standard cast iron rings with a moly face will be fine for your build. The unusual ring grooves on the FE will mean you're limited to a moly "E-series" Sealed Power or Hastings set anyways. No plasma-moly stuff is available.

 

Thanks for the insight Barry, This is why I come here.. Answers!! or at least contraversy LOL I will talk to the Machinist Tuesday about the hone job working with Moly rings, and order a set of moly's to go with the application. If in fact Summit has a set that I cannot find online..anyone have a link to the correct set for this it would be very helpful... Thanks, Redman

 

Wow Beemernut.... I'm not going to say you said it was so...but hey

Cylinder Bore Refinishing
As a rule, engine builders should follow the cylinder bore refinishing guidelines by the ring manufacturer. But like every other aspect of engine building, opinions differ as to what techniques work best in any given situation.

Federal-Moguls Gabrielson says a "plateau finish" is the optimum bore finish for todays moly-faced rings. A plateau bore finish is what all types of rings eventually produce when they are fully seated, so the closer the bore can be prefinished to a plateau-like condition the less the rings and cylinders will wear as the engine breaks in, the better the rings will seal right from the start, and the longer the rings will last.

There it is in black and white..

 

What do I know?
For a engine rebuilder or manufacture they just want the rings to seat without come backs, this involves a more agressive bore finish which increases bore and ring wear. Manufactures have no intrest in you getting 300K plus miles out of a vehicle, they would go out of business, they are in sales.
Plan "B" is a less agressive bore finish, longer time to seat rings but the motor runs in the 100's of thousands of miles. I look long term but again what do I know, 'ex dumb a$$ A&P mechanic?

.....=o&o>.....

 

There is just one more tiny detail pertaining to the use of moly rings. Since they are made of a very hard material you can wear the cast iron cylinders out faster. Instead of the rings and the cylinders wearing together you have most of the wear exerted on the cylinder walls. This fact is nothing new and has been well documented by old time machinists and engine builders from way back before our time.

Now stop and think how many engine rebuilds do you want to get out of your block?

I'm sure this point will be challenged, but it won't change anything.

 

Which explains Beemers choice to burnish his cylinders.. However after way to long on the phone with a Summit rep (i have limited patience) finding a set of moly rings for the application is really starting to annoy me. I have a perfectly good set of Cast rings. That will suffice for the time frame I want them to.. I can start the build sooner etc.. to heck with it.. I use them.

 

Your right - - it will be challenged because it is not true. The "Scott Gabrielson" quoted earlier is a good freind, and he worked for me - - at the time I RAN the Speed-Pro division of Federal-Mogul. I might actually know a little bit about piston rings since my guys sold around 20 million dollars worth per year. Thats replacement parts - - not the hundred million or so that we sold to OEM. But no - you'd rather repeat old wives tales from 40 years ago. Thats the last time that a plain cast faced ring was used in any production vehicle. And we all know that those 1963 motors went gosh - 70,000 miles before the rings were smoked - - compared to new stuff that has to go 150,000 before the first failures show up in the test curves.

 

My friend, you've mistakenly bought into the old wives tale of Moly rings being some sort of alloy, as in "chrome-moly" steel. They're simply cast iron rings faced with a moly coating to speed up the break-in time. The only ring material I've seen in auto engines are iron, chrome faced, and moly faced rings.

 

You ask how many engine rebuilds with a moly ringed motor, lets see here you get the minimum of 200K to 300K miles plus a few bore jobs puts that block close to a million miles. By then you are too old to remember plus you block isn't the only one out there, they are common and easy to replace. If rare why not sleeve it? In the late 60's I would rebuild every time the motor started to smoke, that would be app 25K miles then slap another set of Grant's cast iron rings, old school like a slow turning Packard at 6.5 cr.
Lets not forget chrome rings and the bore wear they cause as they don't absorb oil like a moly faced ring.
.....=o&o>.....