Broken Piston Ring Found During Tear Down
Hey guys, I tore down my 440 yesterday for a trip to the machine shop over the off season. A couple weeks ago at the track, I broke a rocker arm and bent a push rod on #6 intake. Because of the push rod beating the crap out of stuff, I had aluminum dust in the top end, so that is what prompted me to do the tear down.
During the tear down, I found that I had a broken ring on #8 cylinder. It was the bottom ring. The broken piece must have stayed in the grooves all this time, because the walls in that cylinder were not scratched to hell. This find was interesting, and un-expected. The pistons are 30 over KB hypers, and heavy-*** LY rods. These had 2 seasons on them, with about 60 drag strip passes, and about 5,000 street miles. When racing, I shift @ 6,000 rpm. My Cuda weighs 3600 with me in it, and we were running 11.1's consistently in the quarter. Top end was Trick Flow 240's, Howards hydraulic roller, Weiand tunnel ram, dual quads.
I'm building back with a stroker kit - so i wont be re-using this rotating assembly again.
However, I AM curious how a ring breaks like this? I have never had a ring break before.
Hey guys, I tore down my 440 yesterday for a trip to the machine shop over the off season. A couple weeks ago at the track, I broke a rocker arm and bent a push rod on #6 intake. Because of the push rod beating the crap out of stuff, I had aluminum dust in the top end, so that is what prompted me to do the tear down.
During the tear down, I found that I had a broken ring on #8 cylinder. It was the bottom ring. The broken piece must have stayed in the grooves all this time, because the walls in that cylinder were not scratched to hell. This find was interesting, and un-expected. The pistons are 30 over KB hypers, and heavy-*** LY rods. These had 2 seasons on them, with about 60 drag strip passes, and about 5,000 street miles. When racing, I shift @ 6,000 rpm. My Cuda weighs 3600 with me in it, and we were running 11.1's consistently in the quarter. Top end was Trick Flow 240's, Howards hydraulic roller, Weiand tunnel ram, dual quads.
I'm building back with a stroker kit - so i wont be re-using this rotating assembly again.
However, I AM curious how a ring breaks like this? I have never had a ring break before.