Early next week I'm having a new clutch and flywheel installed in the Prelude and the timing belt tensioner fixed.

So tonight, just to have something to do car-wise because I'm kind pumped about the new stuffs going in, I decided to do a compression test. I got the following results with a dry test: 140, 135, 145, 140. And the following results with a wet test: 175, 175, 180, 175. So I'm thinking that my piston rings are going/gone south of healthy.

My question is this: if the shop that's going to do the clutch, fly and timing belt stuffs is going to be in the engine for the aforementioned work, how much more difficult would it be to get them to relpace the piston rings? I've never really done any work in the head or bottom end and don't really know what's involved.

Also, is it OK to just slap a new set of rings on the old pistons? Or is there something else that has to be done/looked at.

As a disclaimer, I'm not really wanting to go the bottom end build-up route as the only other thing left for me to do is to possibly pick up some Crower stage 2 cams and new valve retainers and springs, so slapping higher compression, forged pistons or forged rods isn't really something that I want to do.

Any advice/info would be great.

Oh yeah, since I'm out of warranty, all the cost is coming out of my own pocket.




[Modified by chim, 9:29 AM 8/9/2002]