what's the point of total seal rings ?
They are good for taking your money. Every person I know of or heard of that ever used them had trouble with them.
I've probably used 100 sets.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I hooked a blowby meter (just a simple manometer) to a 400 Chevy that no matter how well the bore was prepped, it would bury the meter 1.3-1.5 seconds into the dyno pull. You could watch it build pressure from the hit. If you made a long enough pul it would eventually hit 12 inches on the gauge.
Swapped in the Total Seal gapless tops and no matter how hard you pulled on it, it would never go more than 2 inches on the manometer. I tested a couple more engines that were less prone to ring seal issues but I always found better seal UNDER LOAD with the gapless TOP rings. Use them in my engine that I may stick in the hole today.
Done correctly, any ring will seal. Depends on what you expect, how you evacuate the crankcase, how you finish the bores and a couple other things.
If your Total Seal rings didn't work, find a different machinist.
BTW, gapless second rings have been around for long before the gapless top. That ring set has some issues. Gapless Top ring technology was done because the Pro Stock, Comp, and I assume ASScar guys were ESSENTIALLY running gapless top rings so Total Seal found a way to almost duplicate what costs thousands of dollars to do...run essentially a gapless top ring. Either way, you better have your second ring correct, or the top will unseat under load.