Replacing Piston Rings

[theronin]

I just performed a compression test on my baby and it was very low on all 4 cylinders (under 150 for all 4) standard is around 179 IIRC. I proceeded to pour a capful of oil into each cylinder then retest each one. the readings i got were about 200-210 a cylinder. So from this i assume that my rings are bad! the engine has 115k on her and i never take her up into the high rpms or bash on her at all. so my question is, how easy is it to replace the rings? Could i do it myself? I have done my brakes and vlsd, just wanted to know if it was feasible at all to undergo it myself! Does anyone have any ideas or advice for me? thanks in advance. Logan

[CoasTek240]

i am wondering the same thing.. i'm in almost the exact situation, and seem to have the same mechanical ability. i've revamped all my brakes, moved battery, made custom intake, and i've swapped a vlsd. are we lookign @ something we may be able to do ourselves w/ some guidance?

[RBBaby]

* WARNING - I have never opened up a KA or SR, but I have completely disassembled a couple 4 stroke lawn mower engines - thats where my info comes from.


Anyways, from my experience, the piston rings are the most difficult things in the entire engine to gain access to. you have to completely disassemble almost EVERYTHING. when I took apart the lawn mower engines, almost every single part on the engine had to be removed. think about where its located, heh, you cant pull it out the top, and to get it out of the bottom, you need to remove everything. but putting it back on, and doing it correctly, is much, much, much harder. But think of all the new parts you can put in with the engine totally dis-assembled! anything you could ever dream :-D go get a loan, bey-otch.

If you can do that, you wont have any problems.

[boosteds14]

what ever you end up doin, its advised to do a good hone so you can get any imperfections in the cylinder walls out. this way here, You will need to get the block out of the car.

[L.D. 100]

ive done it, (17 year old HS kid) its not really difficult, just takes a while because you gotta take alot of stuff off. I left the block in there though, well barely, i took off the engine mounts to move the motor up and slide out the oil pan over the crossmember. agree with boosteds14, i honed my cylinder walls and replaced rod bearings while everything was out.