Shallow Grove Oil Rings

[kidego31]

Maybe I can save someone else a headache before it starts. Working on rebuilding my 350 this weekend and getting all the rings on my pistons. Everything was going great until I was putting the pistons in. I would not get past the oil ring. I thought maybe I had a little piece of dirt still in the groove (I really didn't think so since I spend a few hours cleaning the pistons) but took the oil ring back off and cleaned the hell out of it again. Still the same results. I stuck the oil ring back in the cylinder and double checked my gap and it was just over a .001.

Scratch my head for a bit and then did a little searching. The motor I am rebuilding is a goodwrench motor and come to find out it has a "shallow" oil ring groove. Standard is .200 but from what I read there are some .160 or .165 oil ring grooves in some of these newer crate motors. Kind of frustrating but it is what it is. Just ordered a new set of rings so hopefully it will be back together by the end of the week.

I have rebuilt some engines through out my time but this is the first time I have ever ran in to this problem. Measure the depth of your oil ring groove before you order your rings. Hopefully I will save someone the headache I dealt with.

 

[Swims350]

I did the exact same thing on my 88 tbi block. I had everything ordered, cleaned, honed ready and BAM no go.

I called up summit and had em send me the right rings, got em in worked perfectly.