Technical Doing a ring job the old way

too many moons ago to even think about doing it now........................

 

I hope you can find the parts you need.
Bob

 

I have done a couple of in chassis rebuilds over the years ...was much younger then. I'll be honest I didn't read through every post but I will tell you this...In my shed I have an in chassis boring machine that was given to me years ago. It was not uncommon back in the day to actually bore the block in the car.

 

yes, there were a couple of those boring in the car stories told, that you probably skipped over. i think most of the older boring bars were designed to be used in the car, or in the shop.

 

I forgot to include this in my previous posting; use E-Bay for "welfare" parts. Lot's of NOS/NORS, and you may even find a single piston or a full set. I'll buy parts I "think" I might need for future projects, just so I have them on hand, because when I need them, if I have't already bought them, they won't be available. A friend from high school, the same one who's parents had a Rambler Station Wagon with the fold down, porno set, seats, Father had a portable boring bar. He left it under the back porch, where rust took control of things. The thing wads, he would't sell it to me, and instead, had to toss it out because it was ruined. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

I suspect Squirrel engine was Rebored .020 and one cyl required .030 to clean it up . and since the Rebore it has been freshened up at least once with new rings and knurled pistons.

 

Yes, something like that. And also, #5 piston has been replaced more recently, it's cleaner and not knurled, and has the ring alignment pins, and the rings were barely worn at all compared to all the others.

 

Never worked with anything that had pinned rings in it like this. Am I seeing this right...? There's a single long pin that locates all the rings on a given piston?

 

There is a pin about an inch long at the top, and another shorter one at the bottom in a different place, for the lower oil ring (it's a 4 ring piston, the lower oil ring is below the piston pin).

 

Everything I was taught about piston rings in school (yeah they used to do stuff like that) we staggered the ring gaps at installation. But I sort of imagined piston rings were supposed to float and move around. Do they never move? The gaps that is.

 

Is there a Ring pin ridge in the cylinder if so I doubt a ball hone will remove it.

 

I don't think you want to remove any material from anywhere, that's why I said a ball hone/glaze breaker. I thought this was a quickie ring job so he could run it awhile. Now we are CC"ing the head and doing a valve job. Might as well pull it ,sleeve all six and put forged pistons in it and some Howards rods.

 

I'm doing it as cheap as I can.

The original ring setup is pretty interesting....the gaps are indeed offset from the notch, but not by much.

I'm using a 3 stone hone, it doesn't take out much metal. There are no noticeable ridges where the ring gaps were.

 

I applaud you Jim. I figured this was the perfect way to show some of the younger crowd who may be down on bucks another way of getting an old car driveable so they could have some fun. Just like we did as kids. Then as we did later when we got into the real money working at the Vickers station we could do it over the right way. Or not! LOL

 

thanks, I'm glad someone gets it.

I can afford to spend a lot of money on the car, but I don't want to.

 

After looking at a old Motors manual Hudson pined rings are square cut on the ends and need to be filed to wrap around the out side of the pin. As the rings wear the thin part over the pin goes away causing a vertical ridge to wear in the cylinder. New rings are going to sit on that ridge and not let the ring go out against the cylinder wall until the end of the ring wears off.

 

Re-rings were done so often that shops had to be competitive with each other to make $$. If you could leave the engine in, less labor than yanking it out. Valves in the block, same concept. The old timers that went around doing just the valve work, nothing else. They'd show up at your house or shop, bing, bam, boom and they were done. Most took the valves back to their shop and brought them back the next day.

 

We would crack open an old y-block Ford once in a while and find 1 oddball piston, probably to save a gouged cylinder.

 

Do yourself a favor and replace the timing chain and at least inspect the brass oil pump gear. The Hudson is a timing chain stretcher and the oil pump gear can wear so thin that it breaks and goes thru the engine. Use the best head gasket you can get. These are good engines but they have their weaknesses.

 

It doesn't cost anything except labor to lap the valves and polish & CC the combustion chambers.

 

Thanks for the warnings. The oil pump gear is still in good condition, and I do have a spare oil pump with the gear, that I can take on a road trip if need be. There doesn't seem to be slop in the timing chain when I turn the crankshaft back and forth

It costs a manifold gasket, you know...as well as for a burette....and it also costs me effort that I don't want to expend. If I were going NASCAR racing in 1952, then this stuff would be necessary. But I'm just driving an old car around for fun.

 

I enjoy working on heads. I do things like polish and CC the chambers. Do a three angle valve job. Port match the runners in the intake manifold & heads to match the gaskets hogg out the exhaust ports. Even on a stock rebuild. Ive got a set of 57 fuelie heads with the correct casting numbers. Would of been worth a lot of money. But I reworked them. Pinned rocker studs. valve guides machined for umbrella seals. Bigger intake valves. ported & polished. They are now on a stock 69 large journal 327. that got rings & bearings and a 30 -30 cam. Been built a couple of years. never been started up.

 

I've used my kwik way in place mostly on farm tractors mostly just on one hole and a couple of cars would not try it on a v motor.

 

I've got the hone set designed just for that. It has several grit stones so you can cut pretty fast at the start and then finish the bore with finer grit. I've never used it for that myself though.
I did a number of in the chassis rering jobs over the years and it was real common to pull the head on a straight six and do a a ring and valve job and have it back together the same day back in the 60's. Worked with a guy in the 70's in a Pontiac dealership in Texas who did in the chassis rering jobs on Pontiacs all the time. Pull the heads, and get them shipped to the machine shop, drop the pan that you weren't supposed to be able to drop pop the pistons, hone it clean it up, clean and replace the pistons with new rings and bearings and put a new timing chain and gears on and put the pan back on and be ready for the heads to come back. He did a number of them in at 8 out at 5 with an hour long lunch break and smoke breaks in between.

 

Ive did plenty. However I was never all that fast. I spent more time cleaning parts that I did on the actuall assembly. Ive never been one to be be in a big hurry I like to take my time . It took a bit of time to cut the ring ridge from the top of the bores. Then I paid high dollar for a snap on ridge removing tool that sets down in the bore and cuts the ring ridge from the bottom up. It follows the bore and will get every bit of ridge even from a out of round bore and will not over cut. Made a distasteful task easy.

 

Have you heard anything from the parts guys yet? This is fun stuff, I've did a few (not Hudsons) over the years to pedel..

Sent from my SM-G900V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

not yet, he said it would probably be after the weekend.

 

WOW!!! I've never heard of "pinned" piston rings, so I went to my 1959 edition Motors Manual, looked up Hudson's, and sure enough, there they are. I can't imagine cutting the "vertical" ridge formed by the "ends" of the piston rings, let alone doing the ridge at the top of the cylinder to start with. Personally, I'd be thinking engine swap at this point; I can't even consider going into a parts store to get the rings; especially if one set of rings is for a different size/overbore than the others. This reminds me of of the old saying, "if you find yourself deep in a hole with no way out, stop digging!" I applaud your efforts just the same, and I hope you prevail, I really do. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

Oh, it's not THAT bad

I have a couple "late model" Caddy motors sitting in the shop, but I don't really want to go there with this car.

 

Been in many two strokes, which of course have pinned rings, and have yet to see a vertical ridge. The pins are not in the same place so one ring wears the spot left open by another.