Okay i'm about to buy a helms manual if i do plan to do this. But even if I do decide to change the piston rings, is it a hard process?

1.) Is this basically how it goes. Take off oil pan, take off crank and the pistons will fall out along w/ the crank? Replace rigns... Put the crank assembly back on?

2.) The furthest i've gone w/ motors is swapping one alone. Have never messed w/ anything under the valve cover or on the block. Do you think the helms manual will be enough of a guide to do the job?

3.) can the job be done without having to remove the motor and jus tby working underneath the car w/ a pair of helper hands?

 

Replacing the rings without honing the cylinder walls is only doing half the job.Most of the time the engine will burn oil/smoke as bad or worst than before.If your at the point you need new rings,you should be looking at going completely thru the engine.
Glenn

 

You have to take the head off to get the pistons out.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by NJIN BUILDR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Replacing the rings without honing the cylinder walls is only doing half the job.Most of the time the engine will burn oil/smoke as bad or worst than before.If your at the point you need new rings,you should be looking at going completely thru the engine.
Glenn</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

when you say i should go compeltely through the engine do you mean i should check up other things. like change all the bearings and such?

I understand that honing can be done at home w/ one of those things you attatch to a drill. Would this DIY method, in terms of quality, compare to having a machine shop do it? In my situation right now, taking it to a machine shop is entirely out of the question due to budget issues but just for personal interest i'd like to know.

Is the method easy?

Oh yeah, and do you know any of the answers to my other questions by any chance? thx

 

To hone the cylinders you will need to completely disassemble the engine to clean it.If you don't have the cash to have it honed and cleaned (maybe around $100) then don't take it apart.The time and money you do spend will be waisted.Its tough to get rings to seat on the properly finished cylinders,you don't stand much of a chance on poorly or not honed walls.
Glenn

 

its not hard, just time consuming. i love working on my car so i think its fun.

a little summary, take off:

head, exhaust mani, oil pan, crank, pistons & rods, hone cylinders (use auto tranny fluid as lubricant)

clean , clean clean, put new rings on and put back together. alot of work for 100 dollar part.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by NJIN BUILDR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">To hone the cylinders you will need to completely disassemble the engine to clean it.If you don't have the cash to have it honed and cleaned (maybe around $100) then don't take it apart.The time and money you do spend will be waisted.Its tough to get rings to seat on the properly finished cylinders,you don't stand much of a chance on poorly or not honed walls.
Glenn</TD></TR></TABLE>

So your saying I have to complete dismantle the engine? I've heard of it being done w/ just the head off and the bottom like thor explained. 100 dollars is a lot of money. It's not that i dont have 100 dollars to pay someone to do it. It's just that i'm bitter about paying people to do things when I have an opportunity to learn how to do it myself so that next time around i can know what i'm talking about and sav esome money. In the longrun it's just to save me some money... plus it's a single z6 not much money if i were to completely screw it up anyways.

What do you guys think? Attempt it myself or pay someone else? The whole process seems simple enough.

Do you guys know if the helms covers this stuff?

 

if you aint got the cash hone it it the car. Its not hard just time consuming. I know several people that have don in car rebuilds, myself included. My gsr motor is now 30k on the rebuild and over 300lbs of nitrous

 

Honing the cylinders is messy.The gritty oil will get in the bearings and destroy them.I've seen people do a lot of things that aren't right.It doesn't take much longer to remove the engine to do it right.It doesn't take much money to do it right and get good results.The ball style hones don't do much.This is about the cheapest style of hone I would use http://jcsonlinetoolshed.com/p....Take you time and get the parts clean before assembly.If the ring grooves are worn the engine will still burn oil after all this work.Putting new rings in a worn out engine is usually a waist of time and money.I've done it and seen it done way too many times.You can do what you want with this advice.This is from first hand experience,not "a guy said.....".
Glenn

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by The-Beast &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">So your saying I have to complete dismantle the engine? I've heard of it being done w/ just the head off and the bottom like thor explained. 100 dollars is a lot of money. It's not that i dont have 100 dollars to pay someone to do it. It's just that i'm bitter about paying people to do things when I have an opportunity to learn how to do it myself so that next time around i can know what i'm talking about and sav esome money. In the longrun it's just to save me some money... plus it's a single z6 not much money if i were to completely screw it up anyways.

What do you guys think? Attempt it myself or pay someone else? The whole process seems simple enough.

Do you guys know if the helms covers this stuff?</TD></TR></TABLE>


Yes the Helms manual does cover it.

As the others said...its not all that easy
You need to be patient man

You can re-use all the bearings BUT you must label EACH and every bearing according to the cylinder it came from and if it was top or bottom bearing. Regardless if it's the crank or piston rods...you need to label each bearing because if you mix them up and put them where-ever you can risk messing up your crank.

I'm not trying to scare you but when you do a job that involves taking appart 80% of your motor...you need to put everything back into it's origional spot.

The pistons you have to pull out from the top of the block and same goes when you put them in(top of block sliding down)

Make sure when you are pulling out or putting in the pistons and rods that you dont hit the cylinder wall because that may chip or leave marks in it.


Good luck man and any other questions post up or you can IM me

also remember to get all the TQ specs!!!
bart

 

Man, thanks a lot for all this help. Atleast now i've got a pretty good general idea of how things are gonna go down.

NJIN BLDR- So if the grooves for the piston rings are not all sharp right angles then does it need to be replaced? That hone you posted is pretty damn expensive! 180 something! Jeez. Would I do okay w/ a cheaper one? I mean.. 180.. lol Thats just as much as my motor is worth probably.

Mr.RHTuner- So then the crank doesn't actually have to come off of the car?

I remember seeing this one animated gif of a motor. It was transparent and showed all of the inner workings of the motor. Does anyone have this picture by any chance?

Again, thanks a lot for the help!

 

flash animation at bottom of page. pretty close to your single cam construction.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/engine3.htm

 

You remove the oilpan, crank and head.. If you want to do it yourself then you going to need a ball hone..

Since the engine are so easy to take in and out I would remove it and tear it completely down.. I paid $70 to get my block jet washed and honed.. The ball hones usally go for $50 or so.. The learning experance comes from building the engine so its just good to pay to have it cleaned and honed and do the rest yourself..

EARL can get you the bearings and Hastings mfg. can get you the rings..

 

Craftsman sells a stone hone for about $25.

I will give you an example of being cheap!! I hydrolocked my engine about 20K miles ago. I had it towed home and dropped the oil pan to see the damage. As far as I could tell, only the #2 piston rod was bent. I went to my local Honda dealer with my Acura part # and ordered a rod with overnight shipping. I started on a Thursday night and pulled the head the next morning. I pushed the piston up and out of the block and when the rod arrived I took it with the old one to my local machine shop to have the rod swapped out.

In a couple hours (he was busy), I had my new rod and ole piston & rings ready to go back in. Saturday morning I started putting everything back together and here comes the cheap part. I reused my old rings, bearings, headgasket and oil pan gasket. The only thing that actually got swapped was the bent rod. My engine had about 255K miles at this point, and now it has 275K miles with no oil leaks, no headgasket problems, and I still get around 320 miles to the tank. I am cheap, and not proud, but these B18A's are sweet engines!! I am about to swap out that rod bearing soon, cause it had obvious wear when I put it back in, but I didn't have the cash to swap it at the time. Oh, and I do redline on occasion.

And another thing, this was the first time I ever did any internal engine work, and all worked out fine for me. I am now in the process of buying parts for a major rebuild that I will do when the engine hits around 300K miles.

Good luck, and I am not advocating using old parts, but I had no choice.

 

i did change my piston rings 3 months ago
1:took the head off
2il pan out
3 :unscrew rodbolts and pull the piston frome the top of the block
4: change rings (bery carefully )
5: put pistons 1 and 4 in the block with a ring compressor ( ADautozone for 11.99$ )
6 ut 2 and 3 in place and viola that all and, then tight the rod bolts at factory spec
7:put oil pan aback up head, tha alll

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sam92Teg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Craftsman sells a stone hone for about $25.

I will give you an example of being cheap!! I hydrolocked my engine about 20K miles ago. I had it towed home and dropped the oil pan to see the damage. As far as I could tell, only the #2 piston rod was bent. I went to my local Honda dealer with my Acura part # and ordered a rod with overnight shipping. I started on a Thursday night and pulled the head the next morning. I pushed the piston up and out of the block and when the rod arrived I took it with the old one to my local machine shop to have the rod swapped out.

In a couple hours (he was busy), I had my new rod and ole piston & rings ready to go back in. Saturday morning I started putting everything back together and here comes the cheap part. I reused my old rings, bearings, headgasket and oil pan gasket. The only thing that actually got swapped was the bent rod. My engine had about 255K miles at this point, and now it has 275K miles with no oil leaks, no headgasket problems, and I still get around 320 miles to the tank. I am cheap, and not proud, but these B18A's are sweet engines!! I am about to swap out that rod bearing soon, cause it had obvious wear when I put it back in, but I didn't have the cash to swap it at the time. Oh, and I do redline on occasion.

And another thing, this was the first time I ever did any internal engine work, and all worked out fine for me. I am now in the process of buying parts for a major rebuild that I will do when the engine hits around 300K miles.

Good luck, and I am not advocating using old parts, but I had no choice.</TD></TR></TABLE>

LOL I did that 4 yrs ago on my 91 LS engine except I replaced the head gasket and oil pan gasket. 40k miles later the engine still runs good and strong. The engine had 205K miles prior to replacing a bent rod. I sold the car to a friend of mind and to this day the engine has over 260K miles on it and still runs strong.

BTW if I had to do it again I definitely would've used new parts.

 

i have a similar question but my cylinder walls are fine. the motor only has 60k miles on it and doesn't burn oil. the motor is out of the car but i just wanna switch to type s pistons for the extra compression in my h22. not going oversized or anything, so is honing neccesary and if i don't hone should i or should i not get new rings.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sedracer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i have a similar question but my cylinder walls are fine. the motor only has 60k miles on it and doesn't burn oil. the motor is out of the car but i just wanna switch to type s pistons for the extra compression in my h22. not going oversized or anything, so is honing neccesary and if i don't hone should i or should i not get new rings.</TD></TR></TABLE>

In order for the rings to seat properly you need to hone the cylinders and get new rings..

 

What's not clear from everybody's stories is what happens after honing? The tolerances are mere thousands of an inch. How can standard OEM rings fit in a cylinder that's been honed? What happens if after honing, the OEM rings do not fit? How likely is the cylinder to be oval? Will it automatically become round by honing?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by dpkelly &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">What's not clear from everybody's stories is what happens after honing? The tolerances are mere thousands of an inch. How can standard OEM rings fit in a cylinder that's been honed? What happens if after honing, the OEM rings do not fit? How likely is the cylinder to be oval? Will it automatically become round by honing?</TD></TR></TABLE>

If done right with a proper hone you will not increase the bore size more than half a thousands of an inch.If your bores are out of round this will not correct that.This is not the best way to rebuild an engine, it is the cheap way.If you don't hone to much std rings will work.But this is necessary to get new rings to seat.

 

Thanks for that input. My engine has 240k on it. The compression was not good on 2 out of 4 cylinders. After I put oil inside, the compression was really good. Now, another poster said to check my timing, replace plugs, wires, rotor, etc. I'm going to do that soon. The reason is unburnt gas lining the cylinder walls causing poor compression. If this doesn't get corrected, then I'm looking at a rebuild. I may take it to a machine shop for honing.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by torr &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
a little summary, take off:

head, exhaust mani, oil pan, crank, pistons & rods, hone cylinders (use auto tranny fluid as lubricant)

</TD></TR></TABLE>

How the hell do you plan to get the crank out? Its bolted to the flywheel. you'ld have to pull the tranny which negates the purpose of an in car rebuild.