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Total Seal Rings

10K views 60 replies 16 participants last post by  River Rat 005 
#1 ·
I know rings have been through the mill on here.

My question is, the difference between the top ring gapless and the second ring gapless? What's the pros and cons? Are they really any better than conventional rings?

I've got a 468 NA BBC, single 1050 Dom, 12.5 comp, no n2o used for drag race only in a hydro.

Tim
 
#2 ·
That would depend on if you are running a crank scraper and if so what will lube the bore? Lots of areas for lube but if compression retention is the main area of concern than consider the lube of the bore!! You may find that max H/P is great but the sacrafice may be the block!!!M
 
#3 ·
I read this 3 times and I still can't figure it out :)bulb :)sphss

Sleeper CP :D
 
#4 · (Edited)
I'd suggest calling the guys at Total Seal. We decided to go with a gapless ring for our new blown alcohol motor. I've never run either a gapless ring or a blown motor. I talked to Keith at Total Seal 2 or 3 times deciding on what ring package to go with. Took some back and forth between Total Seal and my piston mfg to come up with the best combo for our engine.... We ended up going with a TNT gapless top, Napier second and standard tension oil ring.
We decided to go gapless to minimize the alcohol contamination in the oil. For higher end blown deals, Total seal recommends a **** top, gapless second and standard oil ring for maximum sealing. We went the other way due to the **** rings reputation for being rough on cylinders.
 
#5 ·
I have run zero-gap second rings for year's. I have no complaints with them. They still leak less than 2% if that means anything :)bulb before Winter 4 leaked 0, 2 @ 1%, 2@ 2% leak. This after lot's and lot's of Nos.

Total Seal claims the top zero gap ring will make more power ... I would love to see an independent test on it. To be honest I think in a running engine a good set of conventional rings make just as much power. I think the bore preparation is more important than rather or not the rings are gap-less or not.

The next major re-build on the 565 will be: gas ported pistons with med-light rings and a vacuum pump, there's more power to be gained there then in the zero -gap ring.

The Total Seal Diamond ( non -zero gap) or C&A Hell Fire rings work just great, just pay attention to the final hone on the cylinder walls. (so I've been told) so there are conventional rings that work just as good if not better I've been told. I wonder what Cyclone used in his re-build :)bulb

Hope that helps. I have some great PM's from Warp Speed on rings, maybe he will give you his viewpoint on it.

Sleeper CP :D
 
#9 ·
X2 Wouldn't pull a time from my pocket for zero gap 2nd, where does the gas that gets past the 1st ring go? Can't help but believe it could help unseat the top top ring. Thought this was the reasoning behind accumulator grooves, and running a larger 2nd ring gap. Can't comment on zero gap 1st, never ran them, just seems like a lot of money I could put somewhere else....like my wallet
 
#13 ·
I think the original idea for zero gap rings were for guys running aluminum blocks, and trying to keep teh rings seated with all the distortion going on in the cylinders. Guys running iron blocks thought it might work for them as well.
My thoughts on running a ZG second ring are as Ray says...trends today seem to be going with a larger secod ring gap so if one was to run one, it might make sense to run it in the top instead of the secong. Personally I don't believe they're of any benefit on an iron block. Round, properly finshed cylinders and quality pistons go a long way in helping the rings do their job.
JMO
 
#16 ·
Total Seal make great rings. Their finishing is more true than lots of other manufacturers. Nice precise measurements. That and I can ride my bike to their place.
But with that being said, the gapless second ring never made any sense to me. Or my engines. We actually tried one in a pretty peppy daily driven street engine to test their claim on longevity. It ended up throwing the top rings out due to top ring flutter and constantly being unseated by the second ring. Then the blowby and oil coming back in it's place. It got ugly. (Another unsuccessful test that taught us quite a bit!)
The gapless top ring starts to scare me as the trend to go to thinner top rings. But I have no proof to back it up, never tried them. Probably never will.
I actually have been using a good quality standard file to fit ring package. I have been using Akerly and Childs ring packages. Ray really knows his stuff and has helped me quite a bit. Great rings at a great price. (And I just got a Christmas card from them yesterday too.)
And about the HTD-Hellfire stuff. You do need to watch your boring. A standard bore is not rough enough to get these rings to seat. They require a 280 finish. (But that is off the top of my head, so don't quote me on that.)
 
#29 ·
But with that being said, the gapless second ring never made any sense to me. Or my engines. We actually tried one in a pretty peppy daily driven street engine to test their claim on longevity. It ended up throwing the top rings out due to top ring flutter and constantly being unseated by the second ring. Then the blowby and oil coming back in it's place. It got ugly. (Another unsuccessful test that taught us quite a bit!)
The gapless top ring starts to scare me as the trend to go to thinner top rings. But I have no proof to back it up, never tried them. Probably never will.
I discussed this a bit back on hotboat a couple years ago with (I believe) fc-pilot, and the above was his experience. I had no idea about them and no info to base any kind of decion-making on as to their usefulness or proper usage so I was looking for info. Top gapless rings seemed to do OK untill you tried to back them up with a gapless 2nd, then he got top ring lift and flutter due to the pressure under the top ring. Never had trouble with them if he ran a std. gapped ring as a 2nd ring.

For what it's worth. :)
 
#18 ·
I think zero gap 2nd rings became popular when common people started using leak down gauges. LOL.

Zero gap top rings do have some use for certain applications.

'Leak down' on a non-running engine is not that good of an indicator for how things seal under power and rpm. Kinda like a flowbench with exhaust ports. IMHO ;)
 
#31 ·
To the OP, I've always had good luck with a conventional ring pack in all the NA engines I've raced. I've never really run super trick stuff, just basic higher end bracket engines. Never really had leak down or wear issues with conventional rings. Doubt I'd have ever tried a zero gap ring on a NA motor though.
When we started on this blown engine, the guy that's helping me suggested the zero gap ring to help minimize alcohol dilution of the oil more than any performance advantage. Total seal suggested a zero gap second and a **** top as a first choice and a zero gap top, Napier second as a close second. Both with standard tension 3/16" oil rings. We decided on the zero gap top since the ring lands are the same dimensions as for a conventional ring. I've never run them so we'll see how they fare compared to a conventional ring. They are about twice what a good conventional ring set costs, so they perform, or they won't go back in after the first freshen up.
 
#32 ·
I have used zero gap top ring sets from total seal
with good results on a couple different engines.
both NA deals, running NOS, rings looked nice
upon tear down.

we ran zero gap rings in the TAFC in the late 90's
never had a problem, not sure it helped but they were free

considering the TS1 set for my current build
 
#58 ·
WOW a lot of info here. I was looking at keeping the combustion above the piston. I didn't know of the dynamics that it could cause because of if. How do you tell if you have ring flutter? Are there any signs to look for? Is there an rpm range this can happen in or can it happen at any rpm?

Tim
 
#60 ·
How do you tell if you have ring flutter? Are there any signs to look for? Is there an rpm range this can happen in or can it happen at any rpm?

Tim
It is really hard to tell between ring flutter and just a bad ring seal unless you have some way of measuring blow-by or crankcase pressure.
Typically ring flutter will happen later in the rpm range somewhere around peak torque or higher depending on the cause. It can be caused by a poor sealing top ring building gas between the top and second ring thus causing the top ring to loose any seal it has on the lower ring land (Seals ok in lower rpm's but goes away around or just above peak torque), or by the weight of the ring being multiplied by piston speed and aggravated by a too loose ring to land clearance and insufficient gas pressure to hold the ring on the land (usually good through peak torque/high volumetric efficiency but leaks in the higher rpm range/lower volumetric efficiency).
Without good monitoring (like on the dyno measuring crankcase pressure/depression) it can be tough to map and makes it hard to find the "smoking gun".
It could be just one or a combination of all of the above!
 
#59 · (Edited)
For whatever its worth......... I ran the gapless hellfire top and bottom rings per the ring manufacturers recomendations a few years back. This was an aluminum blown alky motor, a 548 BBC. I had nothing but problems with the motor smoking, or burning oil. I tried everything to make it stop, from different fuel, to checking intake seal, head gasket seal, to rebuilding the blower 'cause I thought it may be leaking gear oil in the intake. Finally rebuilt the motor with new hone and conventional file fit rings....problem solved. ;)
 
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