Can you hear the pistons ringing?

And I thought I was through with clearances and tolerances…  Seems that it is a good idea to check the ring gap before installing the rings onto the pistons.  The rings go on the pistons and provide compression and such… each piston has 5 rings * 8 pistons equals 40 rings.  Luckily I only need to check the gap on the top 2 of each piston.. so only 16.  This process involves inserting the bare ring into its piston bore, squaring it up about an inch down and measuring how much gap.

15 completed within tolerance and I begin the last ring – why is it always the last one?  This ring was the one I had installed onto a piston to use during squaring the rings.  Installed onto the second ring as a stop and pushed the rings into the bore.  I thought I was sunk as I had to keep using increasingly larger feeler gauges…  but it topped out .018, still within tolerance of .010-.020.  All of the others came in at .012.

Onwards – installing pistons.  Put on the oil ring and position the seam, install the top oil scraper and place the gap at 2 oclock… readjust the oil ring because it just overlapped… install the bottom oil scraper and place the gap at 4 oclock… now go back and readjust the top oil scraper.  Install the second compressor ring and place the gap at 10 oclock, then the top compressor ring and place the gap at 7 oclock… repeat 7 more times.  Did I mention that this is mind numbing, but don’t lose focus because you don’t want to scratch the piston or have a ring shoot off the expander tool across the room (only happened once, the shooting part).  Point is that the ring gap positioning should not be on top of each other.  I've read that when folks tear engines apart - the ring gaps positioning is nowhere near where they started - just sayin...

Get your handy dandy compressor tool and crank it onto the piston compressing the rings tight against the piston that I just dipped in oil, that’s right, this is a slippery, messy process.  I was a bit anxious with the first piston as I banged it into place, but it went right in just like the online videos and books said it would.  Quickly followed by #2, 3, and 4.

Now #5 started just like the others and when I got to the banging part it started on down like it’s supposed to but just before slipping all the way in, the top ring popped out and hung on the bore.  CRAP.  Flip the engine over and bang it back out.  Put the compressor back on and start banging again.. again it popped out, then again a third time.  What is going on?  When releasing the compressor from the piston after the third attempt I watched in slow motion as a little screw popped off the tool and dropped down a water jacket hole. NOOOOOOO!!!  Seem this screw was part of the tensioning mechanism of the compressor tool and wasn’t properly providing compression on the bottom band of the tool and was the culprit for the ring popping out.  Took me 20 anxious minutes to locate my “magnet-on-a-stick” tool and fish out the screw.  This is when my friends words of wisdom popped in my head – “Don’t work on the engine when frustrated”  go to bed.

The conclusion of this is that the tool was a crappy loaner from the local auto store.  I ended up buying a proper quality tool and finished up the piston installation the following day

look what i've done - nice paint.  Pistons installed, timing set installed.