Packard V8 4-piece oil groove piston rings by Wasau - question

[Jack_Vines]

Greetings, All,

Have a question for the Packard V8 engine builder community. Am in the midst of building six Packard V8s right now and ran across a piston ring combination I have never seen before. The cylinders were bored .030" and Egge pistons of the same bore size. I had a set of NOS Wasau .030" piston rings on the shelf I had picked up somewhere, sometime.

The top two rings were as expected. The problem was in the third groove. The oil rings had the usual two thin scraper rings. Where we usually find one expander which holds the two thin rings apart and against the cylinder, this kit had two expanders. One was flat spring steel the width of the third grove with scallops cut top and bottom and crimped into alternating high and low lengths of about 1/2" each. The second expander looked like most I have used, except it fit between the two thin oil rings, with no tabs to go behind the thin rings. When I tried to fit all four pieces in the third groove, there appeared to be no way it could all be compressed to fit in the cylinder. It took many times more force to compress it and thus would have correspondingly high drag on the cylinder walls.

thnx, jv.

Anyone have experience with this setup? I was working with an engine builder with thirty years of experience on literally every type of engine and he had never seen it either.

[WCraigH]

Sounds like somebody sometime put an extra off-brand set of expanders in the ring box. I've never seen a double expander 3rd ring either. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

[Guest imported_Speedster]

Maybe the set let you have the Option of using the type you liked Best? <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I think Wausau is now Federal-Mogul, maybe they have a Tech. department that can help?

http://www.federal-mogul.com/cda/homepage/index

[Jack_Vines]

Thanks for the replies. Didn't look like either would work alone. The flat spacer would not hold the two thin rings apart and the other, more normal looking spacer, would not push them out against the cylinder walls.

Thanks for the link. The guys at F-M today are good on current products, but have no idea about fifty year old ring designs made by a defunct company they never heard of.

Somewhere out there, some old rebuilder has used these in the past.

[Guest Randy Berger]

I remembered a friend of mine had installed an odd set of rings and this was his reply when I asked him.

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The rings I installed were Piedmont.I think they came from Terrill Machine shop.I bought very few parts from Max..Terrill sent old stock parts like Elgin timing chains etc.I believe the Piedmont rings had four pieces to the oil ring,two scrapers,one separator,one expander.I believe they had two rings for either the top or middle compression ring[would have been one of the first gapless rings].Seems to me there were two or three pieces more than normal.I've rebuilt quite a few engines and they haven't blown up yet ,so I guess the Piedmont rings were ok.The engine never burned oil and was never broken in[ unusual].All the ring and piston grove gaps were correct to specs before installing and required a minimal increase in pressure to install. Rich never had anything good to say about Egge!!! This man should mic out the piston grooves.

Randy,just remembered,Clarence Hoffman put a set of the Piedmont rings in his 34 Packard twenty or thirty years ago.Also I believe I measured the width of scrapers and they were narrower.Sorry for all this but my recall is fuzzy.

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[Jack_Vines]

To add to the confusion, a 374" V8 I was pulling apart today had had a piston replaced at some time and the rings on that piston were the four-piece oil ring I described above. The other seven were the more common three-piece rings.

[Guest imported_PackardV8]

4 years ago i overhauled a 1988 2.0 l ford 4 cyl and the replacement rings i got from AAP were a 4our piece design like u describe. I had to put alot of pressure on my ring compressor to get the pistons installed. The engine now has 17K miles on it and it runs fine.

There has been much controvery over Packard oil consumption as is evident in the STB's and SC's. I've always been suspicous of rings (due to the way STB's and SC's are written). I didn't like the 4 piece rings installed in the Ford engine i built due to the additional assembly difficulty but maybe that IS what is needed to correct the Packard oil consumption.

The bigger the piston the more difficult it is to seal. The F 2.0 has a 3-9/16 piston wit ha rather short stroke.