I just joined the Burned by Total Seal Rings Club

[71 T/A]

After 2,500 miles on a new engine, my 455 is now going through about a quart of oil every 150 or so miles. There are no leaks but when I use full throttle there's white smoke from the exhaust.

I had read on this site how others had similar problems with the Gapless Total Seal rings. They suck. I should have gone the more conventional route.

[71 T/A]

After 2,500 miles on a new engine, my 455 is now going through about a quart of oil every 150 or so miles. There are no leaks but when I use full throttle there's white smoke from the exhaust.

I had read on this site how others had similar problems with the Gapless Total Seal rings. They suck. I should have gone the more conventional route.

[68GTOConv]

I have no personal experience with them, but it sounds that joining that club is just a matter of time once you install them. Shame you got bit ...

Mike M

[Tom Vaught]

I would never run Total Seal rings or any gapless
ring on any engine that was going to run street miles.

Your 2500 miles is about 7500 quarter mile passes
and a LOT of people would be extremely happy to
have 300 passes on a set of rings.

Stick with the conventional rings and give up 7
hp and be happy.

Tom V.

[Jeff Walker]

So if you are using them in a drag car whats the best way to moniter their condition? Leak down test?

[Tom Vaught]

yep!

Tom V.

[71 T/A]

Yeah and the manufacturer's rep said they could be used on the street with no problems. Sure.

[Hot Rod]

I have run them since 2000 and have not had one problem..... I not going to get into the pissing contest about it but the long and short of it is you have to know what you are doing with them....

Rodney

[Half-Inch Stud]

71 T/A

Before you assume the rings are bad (could be) DO both a compresion test, AND look for lifted umbrella seals.

Because the 2500 miles sounds about 2200 mile too long for the TS GPLess failure mode I went through.

HIS

[Cliff R]

We tested them once here. The engine was a 455 making just under 600hp. They showed excellent cranking pressure and leakdown test results...but...the engine developed high crankcrase pressure in high gear on hard runs and kept blowing out pan gaskets. We vented the valve covers to the headers and it helped. The engine was freshened up with Speed Pro plasma moly file fit rings and the car ran identical numbers with no more troubles.

I wouldn't qualify our single test as a reason not to use them, we've heard both good and bad results as with most things. I will say that we've NEVER had any troubles with the good old moly top/cast bottom ring file fit set-ups so will continue to use them until something better comes along......Cliff

[SLOW 77]

I have a 11,000 miles on a set of gapless rings. Mine will drink about 1qt every 100 miles, mainly when it is on the highway at 2500rpm or above. When I freshen it up I am going to try some non-gapless as well. I don't have any blown out gaskets or such so I guess I am lucky.

[SGTGTO]

Im kinda new to most of this, but I was always told you can tell what your burning by the color of the exhaust smoke.

Black- Too much fuel
Blue- Oil
White- Coolant

So if this rings true, how are the rings causing the problem. It just sounds to me that you got a coolant leak. As i said though, im kind of new to this, maybe some of the pros can chime in.

[bmpmdf]

Serveral things to do here along with the Compression and leakdown test. Retorque your heads first, then after it is warmed up, do it again. Then the other test. If you are still having the problem, Start pulling plugs to find the cylinders the issue is in. Your plugs will tell what one is leaking antifreeze.

[bmpmdf]

Forgot to mention; I had a car once that had a bad seal between the water crossover and the intake ports. I thought I was in for a long day changing a head gasket. When I pulled the intake, and started to remove the intake gasket, I noticed a very small line, almost a wide cut going from the water hole in the head back to the first intake port. I decided to just replace the in take gaskets and try it. Sure freed up alot of time for me that day!

[Mr. P-Body]

Our findings with gapless rings are the same as Cliff's. GREAT numbers on the engine stand! Actually, less than 5% leakage before ever firing it up. But not long after racing bagan, so did oil consumption. Crankcase pressure, too, became a problem. We did our tests in 4-cylinder circle track engines.
In the end, we found no gain in real-world power (times actually improved with SpeedPro). We also found rapidly accelerated cylinder wear at the top (mucho taper).
As with anything else, our results are not "in stone", as there are many applications where one part outperforms another. But I would not recommend them for a street engine. It does illustrate that "numbers" are just another set of statistics to be manipulated to justify one's position...

[Flowjoe]

This is an interesting thread. I put gapless rings in my 400 (not yet fired) becasue I knew several people who'd had excellent results with them. Now I am wondering what to do.....

[SlowSpitzer]

I was told you run gapless when runnng alcohol.

[PONTIAC DUDE]

I'll stick with conventional rings. Don't need the 50/50 hassles of .............


Is this one gonna be Ok. http://pysales.com/images/sweat.gif http://pysales.com/images/sweat.gif

Besides with new findings and ring gap changes in the last couple of years . A lot of the piston seal issues are non exsistant with filoe fit rings. http://forums.performanceyears.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Ron]

After reading this thread I guess I'm very lucky. I've run gapless rings in my motor for years without problems. No oil consumption problems and performance has not changed at all.

[Formula jg]

Very interesting, on my last full throttle blast of the year down a country road prior to storing the car, I noticed a cloud of white smoke as soon as I released the throttle, at the time I thought I blew something for sure (its the kind of luck I've been having with this fresh stroker with less than 500mi.)there has been a few sleepless nights thinking I may have to pull this motor out again (3rd time now) however I will have to wait till the spring to retest it on the road and decide at that point what to do.

The new rings that came with the Eagle stroker kit were supposedly replaced with new ones on the 1st re-rebuild so I'm not sure what is in there for rings right now.

Does anyone know if the Eagle stroker kit (purchased directly from ESP)comes with gapless rings or not?

[455T/A]

Just a thought now, so don't get excited. You should do a pressure test to the radiator. You might be leaking a very tiny bit of water out the exhaust ports if they were ported too much in the wrong area. White smoke usually means water.

[SCOTT ESTERLE]

The Eagle kits come with Plasma Moly file fit rings.

[george kujanski]

Having the engineering mentality, I always ask Why?...

So here goes... Assuming the stories are true, anyone have a reason why the gapless rings show increased oil consumption after a while?

Geo

[Formula jg]

455 TA,
How can I not get excited, not much has gone right with this build The heads were ported by the machine shop so there is a good chance your right. I've never done a cooling system pressure check, whats involved?

Scott,
Thanks for confirming the ring type, although I can't say with certainty that the shop re-installed the same type.
Is there any way to figure it out without asking the shop or tearing the engine down?

[71 T/A]

Some have suggested coolant loss but when you're constantly adding oil, it's the rings.

[SCOTT ESTERLE]

You must ask the shop.

[Big Mike]

I'm with George on this one. Seems like everytime someone thinks they have a problem part, suddenly everyone has one. Think Fram oil filters and gapless rings. The entire idea of gapless rings is that nearly all the cylinder pressure is kept above the top ring as apposed to slightly more leakage that the second ring must stop on a conventional setup. When you think of the period of time the combustion gasses have to leak past anything at moderate to high RPM, it would seem that the only way leakage would be bad enough to cause problems is if the piston fit in the bore was way loose, the cylinder wall was way out of round, some one installed the rings incorrectly or the finish on the cylinder wall was done incorrectly. The gapless rings are designed to get that last bit of H/P that one might loose with the standard piston ring setup. That said, one could surmise that street use would not be the hot ticket for the gapless set up. One trade off would be that extra pressure and wear on the cylinder walls could occur. I have personally experienced that. I also ran the race car without an air filter, so I am not that ready to put the blame all on the piston rings. The oil ring usually associated with gapless rings is of a low tension design. Again this is to gain that last H/P or two that might be lost to parasitic drag of the oil ring. With that in mind, oil control will not be what it could be with a more conventional oil control ring. For drag racing, that slight loss of oil control is offset by pressure controls to the crankcase. Think vaccum pump or something similiar. This type of pan evacuation is not usually used on a street car. So there you have it. Gapless rings are not poorly designed or defective when used in the proper application. The cylinder wear issue could be real enough. The gapless rings use a chrome facing. Moly rings use a very slippery moly filling that helps to follow slight irregularities in the cylinder wall. They also have mild "lubricating" efect not found in a chrome faced ring. For street use, the moly filled ring is ideal. In the end, proper preparation of the cylinder wall, piston clearance, oil drain back in the piston, ring end gap and tension selected on the oil control rings are paramount to good engine life and oil control no matter what the engine is used for.

[455T/A]

You will need a pressure gauge and a cap to pressurize you cooling system and an air compressor.

Go get a radiator cap with a air valve in it (Quick release)from auto zone or some other parts store. Pressurize it to 16lbs and keep your eye on the gauge, if it goes down then you have a water leak somewhere, or you can take it to a shop that can do it for you. I would take it to a shop.

When we use gappless rings we put a vacuum pump on the engine to create 15lbs vacuum in the engine for better ring seal.

[Brian Baker]

Of all the blown alky racers I see on other boards, 9 out of 10 of them are running gapless rings, and they love them.

Granted, they're tearing their engines down alot more often than your typical bracket racer, but these rings help them greatly with combatting oil dilution from the fuel.

[buwalda]

Has anybody got any firm good/bad results from a LARGER gap on the 2nd ring on a conventional ring pack, as advocated now by Speed Pro ?

[PONTIAC DUDE]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Geoff:
Has anybody got any firm good/bad results from a LARGER gap on the 2nd ring on a conventional ring pack, as advocated now by Speed Pro ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good. http://forums.performanceyears.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

The dude that is wondering about the shop changing the rings. You would notice it in the price difference as the gapless rings do cost a lot more.

[critter]

Here we go again... http://forums.performanceyears.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif http://forums.performanceyears.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

I've run them since 1999 when I finished my car. That included street and track driving. What I noticed was that at extended, high rpm use (read, highway speeds) my car consumed oil. It appears the oil was being pulled in around the teflon valve guides.

It wasn't bad enough to warrent tearing the engine down. I simply added oil when it got low.

I then stepped up to a bigger cam. When I approached that 400 horsepower level I started having oil leaks. That could have been for two reasons. One would be normal wear and tear and the other could be excess crank case pressure. The fact that the rear pan seal was on of the culprits makes me believe that pressure was a factor.

I'm going through the motor right now. I thought long and hard about the gapless rings again but, based on my use of the car, the file fits make more sense to me.

I don't think the gapless rings are a bad product and I know many who run them on the street without issue. I also think most of those cars are below the 400 horsepower level. In my humble opinion, if you intend to drive it exclusively in a racing application, go for it. If you intend to drive on the street, believe there might be some peformance gain, have the money and are below 400hp level, feel free. If you're at or above the 400hp level and run it on the street, you're probably better off with file fit.

That's my 2 cents. I'm out.

[71 T/A]

Critter, what you're saying is what quite possibly is happening to my engine. The car doesn't smoke all the time but the oil level steadily drops until you need to add a quart. I'll have to monitor it further but I would not use the gapless rings again.

[KEN CROCIE]

Whenever I run total seals on a street engine,I run pcv valve only-no VC breathers.This idea was from a service bulletin i received from total seal back in 1976 .The theory is that the gapless rings work so well that there is no blowby to help get rid of excess oil on the cyl. walls.I do this now to any engine that uses oil and does not have a lot of obvious blowby. and most of the the time it works!

[PONTIAC DUDE]

Ken, this is Ken. I like the last line........

and most of the the time it works!

http://pysales.com/images/sweat.gif http://pysales.com/images/sweat.gif http://forums.performanceyears.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_eek.gif

[Half-Inch Stud]

Formula jg,
Pop your valve covers and Visually Inspect each umbrella seal for being lifed-off the valveguide.

Most of the time...the failure mode seems to be tied to the crankcase evac system (stock PCV is not enough for the 1st 2000 miles of varied loads). Sooo, the evac-system has gotta be a part of the Gapless installation.

HIS