Im going to be doing my piston rings sometimere here in the near future. But i havent been able to find a good DIY, i dont want to go into this blindly. I searched for "piston rings", in the EF and All Motor forumn but didnt come up with anything relevant.

Same thing goes for the valve seals, not sure on how to do this, the head is a y8 btw.

Im also not sure if i want to go NA or not. If i wanted to go the all motor route, would i be mistaken to buy OEM rings?

 

Seating of the rings is crucial. What you'd want to do is have the block measured for roundness in each cylinder before going further. If that checks out ok then good, if not you need to overbore (and use a matched set of pistons to the bore size). Then you want to have each cylinder honed BUT I'd recommend a ball type hone. I used the one with stones and it LOOKED good but it wasn't straight (I ended up overboring after that). Last is the rings themselves. The end gap has to be measured very precisely. There is a specific tool that will let you shave off the ends as needed and still be perfectly straight. I tried to do it with a file but it's very difficult to hold each ring and file them straight (tried a dremel too LOL that was a fail).

I've been meaning to do a full step by step write up for a general rebuild. Maybe I'll do it in the next week or so since school will be done soon.

Valve seals are easy (but a PITA to remove). There is a specific tool to remove/install the valve seals but I just used pliers to remove them and a 10mm deep socket and hammer to gently tap them in.

As for turbo with OEM rings, I couldn't say yay or nay on this. Hopefully someone with first hand experience will chime in and put their two cents.

 

Cool, thanks for that. I stil dont know if i want to pick up another a6 block and mess with that, or rip out my current motor, making my EF un-drivable for who knows how long.

The MAIN reason im doing this, is because the block has 314k on it, haha. It has some smoke every now and then. Its nothing major, but the milage worries me.