Rings and bearings

[Bigmike4g63t]

Any suggestions on a brand of piston rings and main and rod bearings? After I got my head off it appears this is needed.

 

[CrackedDSM]

No offense or insult meant, but if I paid a pretty penny for this vehicle and it needed an engine, I’d be talking to the business that sold the lemon to me for a premium. If they didn’t make it right, I’d be putting them on blast. If I’m remembering right this car sold for four zeros/5 figures, or damn close to it.

 

[97egl]

If you've got stock pistons either NPR or Hastings for the rings. If they're forged I would go with whatever brand the pistons are. Wiseco, JE, CP, ect.

For the rod bearings there are going to be a lot of opinions here but I personally like Clevite Tri-Metal bearings. They're not as soft as a full aluminum bearing but also not as hard as the race bearings are. Race bearings have their place in full blown race cars but they are not good for a car that is going to be doing a lot of street driven miles. With a softer bearing if you get any debris in between the crank and bearing the debris will damaged the bearing and not the crank so much. If the crank and bearing make contact for some reason same thing the bearing is softer and it takes majority of the damage. Others may disagree here so read all opinions and then come up with your own conclusion.

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

No offense or insult meant, but if I paid a pretty penny for this vehicle and it needed an engine, I’d be talking to the business that sold the lemon to me for a premium. If they didn’t make it right, I’d be putting them on blast. If I’m remembering right this car sold for four zeros/5 figures, or damn close to it.

I hear you, however I bought it 14 months ago. The car smoked a bit at idle when I went and looked at it. I made them do a compression test while there and it checked out. The only reason I was tearing the engine apart anyways was bc I'm about to go with a 20g turbo and I wanted to replace valve stem seals, head gasket and all the timing related stuff before doing that. I had been driving it
to work everyday since I bought it with no issue.

 

[curt-s]

The issue is few manufacturers make or have old stock of bearings left for 4g63s, especially 6bolts. I just went through the spiel with @DSSA on this recently -- the only thing you can really get now is ACL Tri Metal, and even then there's dwindling stock left in the USA, so you better act fast.

extremepsi, stm, jnztuning, they're all out of Clevite/King for 6 bolt in any of the sizes except .020" turned cranks, and that's just aluminum, not trimetal.

If you can find somebody who has quantities of Clevite Trimetal or King/King XP, I'd take those in a heartbeat over ACL but, alas, here we are. ACL is the only one left.

Rings, as mentioned, your pistons come with them. Forged pistons likely to come with Total Seal and will be file-to-fit regardless of (over)bore size.

My vote would have been King out of their King XP line.

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

I guess I need to pull the pistons and look at them. There is only 78,000 miles on this engine.....

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

I found king xp main and rod bearings.

 

[curt-s]

For a std size crank and they actually have stock, not just a product listing? Good god where?
King has been telling @DSSA that stock will be ready in "6 months" for the last few years, so long that he's basically given up expecting anything. "4-6 weeks" availability on MAPerformance has been the status quo for as long as I can remember.

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

I retract my statement. I put them in my cart and am looking for the rings. I went to cart and saw where they are on backorder. Guess I will just buy the ACL bc I need them asap.

 

[curt-s]

I'd potentially order two, if you can budget it.
Every set I get is damaged in some way. Knicks and gouges on a bearing surface seems to matter not to ACL quality control, especially when they jam them together during packaging. I thought Australia had more pride in their work than that.

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

What would you recommend for rings if I do not get pistons?

 

[dwb]

I'm curious why you think you need bottom-end work? FWIW, I put 270k miles on my original bottom end and 200k on the head. At only 78k on yours, and unless something is damaged or you want to build it, it may not be necessary to mess with the bottom end.

That being said, I used the ACL Aluglied aluminum bearings, both rods and mains since my build was stock-ish and still a daily driver. I did have to buy two sets of main bearings as I found some dings in them (maybe some self-inflicted?). As mentioned above, the aluminum bearings are more forgiving when it comes to debris and preserving the crank.
I also used Nippon 2g pistons and NPR rings mounted on 1g rods. 1g OEM-like pistons will be Evergreen or Enginetech IIRC. If you only want/need rings on original stock 1g pistons, take a look for NPR rings on ebay. You'll need to at least hone the cylinder walls if you replace rings. Always best to take it to a machine shop and have them measure the bores for size and roundness and piston-to-wall-clearance and do the honing for you if that's all that's needed. That's not to mention work that should be done to the crank if you get that far.

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

I have a lot of oil in my intake manifold ports. I have not yet tried to trace it back bc it has been storming the last few days since I got the head off. I would feel better replacing them while they fairly easily accessible at this point. I will post a few pics in a minute

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

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[dwb]

Valve stem seals and/or turbo seals could also be to blame.

 

[curt-s]

Oil on the intake side like that is common when there's no catch can and the PCV is routed directly to the IM. That's why we install catch cans.
Poorly made cans with no baffles or catch material that can condense oil vapour is almost as bad.
Valve stem seals leak down the valve but don't blow out the ports like that.
Turbo seals on the compressor side you'd have oil out the compressor cover outlet and all over the IC pipes directly after the turbo. Check for that

 

[jdxnc]

If you need bearings it would be almost certainly due to an oil pump failure, at which case the whole block needs to be cleaned and gone through. Was there glitter in the oil pan or something that gave you that idea? If there is no oil pump failure then it's a 99% chance the bearings are perfectly fine.

 

[Bigmike4g63t]

Will be this weekend before I pull the oil pan