When the rings fail you!

Sounds cliché when people say, “you need to be familiar with the components of your vehicle”. I must say nothing prepares you for a failed piston ring.

A few years ago, a gentleman drove to the workshop in a Toyota Sienna with a 1MZ accompanied by bluish smoke billowing from the vehicle’s tailpipe.

He had worry written boldly on his face as he alighted from the vehicle. He approached the service advisor who was walking towards him as he drove in and began to narrate how he purchased the vehicle barely a week earlier and carried out a lube service on it two days earlier. The procedure he alluded to included flushing the engine. He later alluded to the fact that the smoke started oozing out shortly after the service was concluded. Worse of all was that he had lost about a litre of oil by taking a trip with the vehicle to Lagos from Ibadan a day before.

An engine leak-down and compression test were carried out and this revealed that four of the six cylinders on the engine had compromised or failed piston rings! The solution was simple, rebuild or replace the engine.

This may seem confusing if you don’t know how piston rings work and the relationship between these components.

The last thing you want to experience is dealing with a weak /damaged engine. Although piston rings are small in size, they are very crucial; their integrity determines the efficiency and performance of an engine.

For a proper understanding of the relevance of piston rings in a vehicle, there must be a basic understanding of the engine as a whole.

Car engines use a four-stroke combustion cycle. The four strokes are intake,compression,combustion and exhaust. During combustion, the spark plug creates a spark that ignites and causes the gas to explode. The power of explosion forces the piston down and converts it to mechanical energy which puts mechanical components to work. A piston ring is a metallic split ring that is attached to the outer diameter of a piston in an internal combustion/steam engine. Piston rings seal the cylinder so that combustion gas generated at the time of ignition does not leak into the opening, it is a seal with a spring-like property which minimize the loss of gases to the crankcase.

Commonly used piston rings

Piston ring size and configuration vary depending on engine design and cylinder material. Piston rings commonly used on small engines include:

Compression rings: Compression rings trap combustion gases and increase the combustion pressure. A compression ring is the piston ring located in the ring groove closest to the piston head. The compression ring seals the combustion chamber form any leakage during the combustion process.

Wiper rings: Wiper rings are also called wiper seals; A wiper ring creates a seal while allowing a reciprocating shaft to pass through the seal’s inner bore. They are often used for fluid containment and to prevent dirt from entering a reciprocating shaft mechanism.

Oil Rings: Oil rings are designed to secure the proper distribution of lubricating oil over the length of cylinder wall traversed by the piston. They are very small in size but an important part of the engine.

Most common symptoms of worn-out piston rings.

a) Check engine light illuminates:

Worn-out piston rings allowthe oil to find its way into the firing and combustion chamber from the crankcase, which affects the conversion of energy to mechanical energy which puts the vehicle in motion. This makes the malfunction indicator light to illuminate.

b) Excessive engine oil consumption:

Immediately piston rings start to wear, the seal between the piston and cylinder is no longer airtight; oil makes its way out of the crankcase, thereby increasing the consumption of oil.

c) Excessive white smoke in the exhaust:

Bad piston rings affect the exhaust system which manages waste products from energy conversions such as gases, carbon and tiny particles suspended in gases. It reduces the efficiency and performance of the exhaust system, which brings out white smoke from the exhaust.

Worn-out piston rings reduce the overall performance of the engine in particular and the vehicle in general. If you suspect that your vehicle engine may be having an issue with piston rings, have the vehicle inspected by a competent automotive mechanic to determine what your vehicle needs.

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