Not sure why it would not evenly bend in all around the ring...???? Help me understand the problem.... not challenging anyone... just never ran into or thought about that problem.
When you squeeze an open ended circle (ring gaps) beyond what it was originally sized for it tries to go out of round.
You will have varying sealing pressures between the ring and cylinder at both the end gap of the rings and 180 away from that on the other side of the ring than you have at 90 in both directions from the ring ends.
It's actually quite possible the ring ends could even try to bite into the cylinder wall.
OR, you could just leave it and run another 20 years, but I doubt it. :D
