'First off, here's my setup. Completely rebuilt b18c1, bored 20 over, new seals, bearings, forged pistons @ stock compression, stock rods, and ferrea SS exhaust valves.

alright, I have some je rings and the end gap was retardedly small, like .0015" so I need to file them to get up to .012" Now here are the questions.

1) Are the top two rings really hard? I spent 2 hours filing down 1 top ring and i only got it to .008".

2) Are the rings brittle? Can I take a rougher file to the rings or will the rings break?

3) Should I smooth out the valve cut outs and other sharp edges in the pistons? If I don't, will I have problems with hot spots at the sharp edges leading to preignition and/or detonation?

4) Should I run a larger end gap? The motor will be n/a for another two years or so, then will be turbo'd or have some other form of forced induction.

Thanks in advance.

Oh, what cam seal should I use for the exhaust cam? There are two, one that looks like a plug with three little plastic ridges with no o-rings, then there's another one with four prongs that look like they snap into the head and it has an o-ring.

 

Bump, because I'd like to know about the rings and the top of the pistons too.

 

1) Ya they took me a while to file down as well keep working it and you'll get there.

2) I had a pretty rough file use that at first and switch to a finer file near the end

3) Yes

4) If your going to run forced induction go with the JE spec sheet that you got a that should be fine.You will loose power for N/A but it'll be safer for forced induction.

 

haha, I really could have used this info yesterday or the day before How important was it to file the sharp edges of the pistons? will it cause too much damage at stock power levels? I just got done putting the engine together today (basically the third time this week) so I REALLY don't want to take it apart again.

oh, i ended up with 19-20 in the top ring (a little over for endurance racing, a little under FI) and 18 in the 2nd ring, and the oil rings were something stupid like 22, but i didn't touch those.

 

I use a ring filer similar to this one for file fitting the rings:
http://www.goodson.com/g5-bin/...P3868

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by garados &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">'Oh, what cam seal should I use for the exhaust cam? There are two, one that looks like a plug with three little plastic ridges with no o-rings, then there's another one with four prongs that look like they snap into the head and it has an o-ring. </TD></TR></TABLE>

I like the one with four prongs for the tranny side of the exhaust cam. Honda also makes a round rubber plug for that spot, but the rubber plugs tend to get hard and leak after a couple of years.

 

Can I just put the ring in a vise and file it down with a normal hand file?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by leadfoot78 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Can I just put the ring in a vise and file it down with a normal hand file?</TD></TR></TABLE>

You can file the rings by hand, but I would not recommend a vise-it would be too easy to damage the rings.