Blown fire ring

Howling

Howling

Soot Sniffer
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
4,304
Had a truck acting up recently and took the head off to find this-

Kind of curious why the fire ring would fail like that.Looks like the combustion was entering the cylinder with the messed up piston.
 

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i blew 5 of mine at once but it was because the machine shop that pressed the cam gear on bent the cam, resulting in some pretty harsh valve slap. The cam went in with no problem so we didnt know it was bent. I had ARP studs in mine.
 
wow the block was wiggling with the cam. the guy that pressed it need to be hit in the face with a phone book really hard.
 
i heard ats uses china made studs, but could you of had a bad set where the welded ring joint didn't hold. whos were they
 
I hear that argument a lot, yet I haven't had any issues on my street trucks with fire rings...
 
well i think fire rings have thier place, if you have street driven truck with low boost(under 75 psi.), and dont do drugs, then fire rings are over kill. if you are sled pulling all the time, high boost, and or alot of drugs, then yea fire rings are probably the way to go. i had 2 fire ring setups fail withink 25k miles combined on both sets. i was not very happy, both times rings were installed correctly, i had a reputable shop deck and cut the grooves in the head, retorqued at least 4 times before any type of harsh abuse, which might be overstating a bit, because my truck has never seen over 50psi of boost, no drugs and has not made it to 500hp. sooo i was a little pissed that the all big and mighty fire ring setup was not holding on my truck. each time the ring failed and cracked, more like it disenegrated, compression went straight to the nearest coolant passage, and well you know what happens next. actually the second time it failed, it failed soo bad that the engine pretty much hydrolocked after shutting it down due to the obvious white smoke pouring out of the stacks. sooo i went with a oring setup this time, and will reccomend orings from now on, unless i feel that it is not the right setup for what the truck is going to be used for. my .02 cents!!

Wes
 
i had my rings for almost three years on a daily driver.. broke the block and doing a rebuild now.. the fire rings looked great
 
that's fine... fire rings hold more pressure than o-rings, but I view them as a wear item... o-rings are a run of strong stainless wire. fire rings have a history of cracking. for a competition truck with high cylinder pressures, fire rings are often the answer, but o-rings will hold a LOT of power and have a better track record as far as reliability.

for a competition truck may see an engine refresh/overhaul once a year isn't out of the question, but for a daily driver, I'll take o-rings every time
 
not to mention the constant retorque's with the fire rings, for the street that is to much of a pita, i know on the CR's the mls seem to do good with a set of studs.
 
The truck is a 04.5 that was rarely driven hard,Max boost around 70 and egt never got above 1400.They have been installed around 2 years.

I agree that o rings would of been the better choice here.
 
I'm not going to argue this one but give you a fact, I'm coming up to (in 2 months I think) on the 7th year with the same head, same O-rings with the head on the 98' with zero gasket failures or issues.

Jim
 
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