Well, now I've gone and done it. I'm working on resealing the heads on The Ark (84 Westy, 1.9). I tried to get the heads off without bringing the cylinders with them to no avail. In fact, I'm glad I didn't spend too much time trying because it took major tapping (more like banging), prying, heating, and cursing to get the cylinder sleeves off, even with the heads out of the van. And so in hopes of finding a way to finish the job without dropping the whole engine I searched the archives. I found a couple of members who succeeded in using a wrench-type ring compressor to get the cylinders back on the pistons without removing them and I thought, 'Aha! That's good news. I'll give that a try.' Well, I tried and on the first one (out of three to do) I ended up breaking one of the rings - the fat one with the spring inside. Now, I'm not sure how I should proceed and so I am availing myself of the wisdom of the list.
Is it OK to just replace one of the rings in one of the cylinders? Should I replace all the rings on that cylinder? Should I replace all the rings on all the cylinders? Are different size rings available? How do I know which to get?
Many thanks, Brian Keese 84 Westy Wolfsburg 'The Ark' 81 Isuzu P'up Diesel 4x4 Bloomington, Indiana |
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