How often did you replace your rings?

T

Tjc702

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I have a 97 vmax600xtc with 4700 miles on it. It runs great. I was thinking about replacing the rings over the summer. Do you think I need to do this?
 
Do a compression test. This will give you an indication of how good or bad the rings are. There are people on here that do rings every 5000 and some at 10,000. All depends on your maintence schedule, oil, fuel and driving habits.
 
Tjc702 said:
I have a 97 vmax600xtc with 4700 miles on it. It runs great. I was thinking about replacing the rings over the summer. Do you think I need to do this?
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Checking piston to cylinder clearances are what's important which IMO is why re-ringing at 5K intervals is recommended. The only way I know to do that is to pull the jugs and measure each paying close attention to the lower thrust sides of the piston skirts.

You'll read about folks here going 10K plus before a re-ring and still finding pistons within specs. Conversely you'll find others here checking at 5K and finding pistons out of spec.

If I were you I'd open it up this summer and plan to replace at least the rings but also plan to replace pistons if need be.

JMO
 
If maintained well.....summerized good and such, you don.t need to replace anything!I had over 14000 miles on my 97 sx before I re ringed it, and it was piped for 12000 of those miles with a shift out of 9000 rpm.......believe!
 
I personally think that tearing into it at 5k is jumping the gun by about......5k for normal use and driving the crap out of them is normal use for a sled.Especialy the tripples.JMHO.
 
yammy said:
If maintained well.....summerized good and such, you don.t need to replace anything!I had over 14000 miles on my 97 sx before I re ringed it, and it was piped for 12000 of those miles with a shift out of 9000 rpm.......believe!
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the way mine is set up i hardly go over 7000.then its just for a few seconds . mine has a ex manifold spacer that was ,made by ??? . it lowers the op rpm . mine is setup for trail use . i hardly ever need to go over half throttle . the trees come up fast .it only took me 11,000 miles to get it right , but it has never puled this hard before
 
My 97 venture 600 (same as your 600xtc) has nearly 7k on it now. I do believe that it was re run with the updated pistons as the 97 600's had ring pin issues, but still it has a lot of power and it registered good on the compression test when I checked it last year..
 
stein700sx said:
Do a compression test. This will give you an indication of how good or bad the rings are. There are people on here that do rings every 5000 and some at 10,000. All depends on your maintence schedule, oil, fuel and driving habits.
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What level of compression should I have on a 1998 VMax 600 XTC?
 
No book will give you an exact number since it can vary so much but it should be between 120-150 psi as long as all the cylinders are within 1-3 psi of each other. Remember, when doing the test make sure the engine is warm, unscrew all the plugs and ground them by laying them on the block and keep the throttle wide open pulling the starter at least 10 times. If you do not leave the plugs in the plug wires and grounded on the block, you could damage the CDI.

A project 700 triple V-max I just picked up is running pretty good but only showing 100-110 psi so I'm replacing the rings.
 
Mileage varies - a lot !!!

Worn rings allow the pistons to rock more which increases skirt wear and fatigue. The only way that I know to determine if a given engine has excess wear is to tear it down.

I have seen engines with less than 5000 miles on them have excess wear. I have also seen engines with 10,000 miles on them still within spec.

Bottom Line: You can't go by mileage.

a leak-down test can be helpful, but best to measure and be sure.
 
Ding said:
Worn rings allow the pistons to rock more which increases skirt wear
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I actually had an old Indy 500 that had so much play in the pistons that the skirt caught the edge of the intake port and shattered. I never knew the rings were so bad as the sled still ran pretty good.
 
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