The Re-Installation of the Pistons
Ok, we got the pistons back from Wiseco, they charged me $80.50 per cylinder to do all the work. And they're purdy! The first thing I did was to wash them down in my sink with some nice hot water and Dawn dish detergent. It cuts the grease and made them sparkle.
The next part was to get the new pistons ready to go back in. I put the new rings on (after sliding each ring into the cylinder to be sure they had a decent gap). The rings only go on one way and the tops of the rings are marked with an "N" as pictured. There was a wider darker ring for the middle of the piston and 3 seperate oil rings for the bottom slot in the pistons. The oil rings needed to be assembled with the wiggly one in first them insert the other two (N on top again) above and below the wiggly one. They sort of slip together. The top ring gap was set to 7 o'clock, the middle ring to 1 o'clock and the oil rings each to 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions. The arrow on the top of the piston represents the front of the motor.
I didn't want to fork over a lot of money for ring compressors so I went down to my megahardware store and bought two stainless hose clamps that for the pistons and covered all the rings. They cost all of $1 each. I tightened them down snugly and then inserted a circlip in each end. I put the clips on the inside of the pistons so I could slip the pin in from the outside once they were on the connecting rods.
I then put the pistons back on each connecting rod and installed the new base gasket. I then aligned the cylinder/barrel assembly on top of the pistons and squared them up. I applied a lot of oil down the sides of each sleeve and into the rings to assist in the slide on job. After about 30 minutes of swearing, removing the clamps, reinsert the clamps...I decided to call my brother Al over to help. 5 minutes later we were done. Lesson: use 4 hands for this part. They slid down nice and sweet. Then He held the barrels down whilst I turned the rear wheel to check for proper motion. Everything rolled over nice and easy and we were happy puppies. We than slapped each other several times on the back and had a beer break. Ye ha, almost there!!!
Beer break!
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