I respectfully disagree. The president is not who you want to talk to. Talk to a ring company's engineeer. He's right in terms of the piston design and material (and much the center of his own marketing). He's totally wrong on understanding how a modern stack of rings work together. The top ring seals on the bore surface, but it also seals against the lower surface of the piston's ring land. The second ring has nothing to do with compression sealing. It's an oil scraping ring and it's edge is designed to do just that. Any pressure retained by this ring is a consequence of it's other function. Once you realize the top ring seals on the lower side of the ring land pressure below that ring is a problem. The problem is when the second ring gap is tight (factory specs) as rpm increases and there's less time for the pressure that will natrally be produced in that area cannot escape. It pushes up on the top ring, and pushes the top ring away from the ring land. You lose the sealing ability of the ring that is actually designed to do it. Then the 2nd ring has to try to seal combustion pressure, and then neither ring is doing what it's supposed to. You lose rpm and power with it, plus it wears the rings and lands faster. This is just a better understanding of how things work than what Mopar had in the 50s when they designed these engines. It's also a "trick" that many pro builders use but few admit to. In this case, with the larger top ring gap that KB has to have, you dont use the same spec of "top ring plus .***". You have to use the factory 2nd ring spec as the base to add to. So a typical 340 +.030 with KB hypers for me is gapped like this:
Top ring - .016 (4.07x.004) +.008 = .024"
Second ring - .016 + .004 = .020"
ops: but i think it will be fine.
