What Makes Your Cylinder and Piston Ring Wear?

What Makes Your Cylinder and Piston Ring Wear?

Engine cylinder liners manufacturers have made a lot of improvements to their engines yet many engines face premature failure. But nothing happens without a reason and for premature failure; there is a reason as well. Whatever the cause behind it, the durability of engine will not enhance and reach a reasonable level of performance unless you determine the reason and get it fix.

Failure in the piston, ring cylinder areas is usually specified by high blow-by and/or high oil consumption. Both blow by and excessive consumption of oil can be occurred during failure in some other part of the engine. If a failure has caused somewhere else, then it might be not possible to restore the engine to satisfactory performance by re-ringing or overhaul.

Excessive oil consumption and blow-by can be occurred by any of the following reasons –

1. External leaks – you can inspect external leaks visually. If you are unable to find the source, you should check for leaks by running the engine and inspecting all joints. Oil leakage at every joint reveals that your crankcase ventilating system is clogged or faulty, or there is a high blow-by due to an accessory failure or ring failure.

How Cylinder Liner in Marine Diesel Engines are Designed

2. Failure of accessories – Accessories may seep oil by letting oil to pass into air intake system of the engine. The accessories responsible for abnormal oil consumption and should be inspected are –

a. Fuel pump vacuum booster diaphragm
b. Mechanical crankcase breather valve
c. Supercharger and turbocharger seals
d. Air compressors using engine pump
e. Clogged air filter
f. Ventilating tube connecting rocker box area to ingest manifold.
g. Starting engines using engine pump

3. Valve guides Let oil to move from the rocker box area to either the combustion chamber or the exhaust manifold. If you find a pressurized intake or intake and exhaust system, high blow by can occur and cause excessive leakage.

4. Piston rings and cylinder combination If you find no problem that causes high oil consumption or high blow-by, it is possible that there is a fault in piston ring, piston and cylinder combination. It could be-

a. Improper ring installation
b. Abnormal wear patterns present on piston surface
c. Top groove wear and top ring breakage
d. Compression ring sticking and oil ring plugging and unitizing
e. Abrasive wear, scoring, scuffing, and corrosive wear
f. Overall piston, ring, and cylinder wear

5. Internal leaks – To examine internal leaks, it would be great if you hire professional for assistance. The reason could be spark plug fouling, leaking, corroded oil coolers, leakage in gasoline engines, etc.

You can always call cylinder liners & cylinder sleeves maintenance service providers to determine issues in your engine cylinder. For any other information, contact experts for help.

1 comment

  1. I am planning on expanding my automotive shop and the most requested service by customers is piston ring replacement. I never knew that even a small mistake like the improper installation of a piston ring may cause problems to the engine. I’ll start looking for a company that can supply my shop with great quality piston rings in the next few days.

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