Richard Holdener: Why you need to gap your rings

Non-repair car talk
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Richard Holdener: Why you need to gap your rings

Post by kevm14 »

https://youtu.be/zyJj6wWArFo

This guy is great. He was one of the guys who did the Big Bang Hot Rod magazine stuff with the 1500hp turbo LS back in the day.

Anyway this video is like a reference video that walks through why you need to gap your rings when you are subjecting an otherwise stock engine to significantly increased output levels. The only thing I'd like is a statement like Sloppy would make, where if you stay under 500 rwhp or so, stock gap TENDS to work fine (not a guarantee, etc.). But he still has some great points in here that help sort through what seems to be some guys' random good or bad luck.

He also makes a statement that I learned from Sloppy a while go. Stock pistons are not "too weak for boost" or whatever people would have said in the 90s. If your rings butt, it's going to snap the ring land. That's it. Otherwise they are plenty strong as long as your tune is safe (rich enough, not too much spark advance).
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