Reliability of O-rings

Thanks for all the replies guys, I am starting to feel a little bit better about using them now. Anybody know of someone close to Texas that can do this for me.
 
Chris, that's what happens at 1800 plus multiple times with the sled in tow, even the mighty commonrail has an achilles heel.
 
I had great luck with o -rings on my 24v but not so much on this 12v engine. Im gonna go with fire rings.
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Fire Rings do not handle heat cycles very well on a daily driver.On a dedicated puller where they are not as prone to the daily heat cycles you will get alot longer service out of them.Most everyone I know who has bee fire-ringed on the street has to pull the head about every 20-30k and redo the rings and headgasket.Wes Dimig has just done his again for the thrid time due to fire-ring failure and he has now gone to a o-ringed head.

On the O-Rings...
They are only as reliable as the guy who used the tool when they ring your head.If they compromise the ring when they cut the head,like mine was,it willnever seal correctly and your going to end up redoing them again after certain head gasket failure.2 of the O-Rings in my head were actually cut off center and not touching the compression ring which lead to the failure in my truck.The shop who redid the head does not use a hand tool to cut the rings and did a much better job.Another thing on the O-ringed head is theya re only as good as the guy who did the initial torque sequence.If the first round of torque is not done correctly the it will fail alot faster........Andy
 
I have daily drove my .105 firerings for 25,000 miles, Not one single problem. It is upmost important to pick a shop that does this diesel stuff all the time. Also firerings with 12mm studs is a bad idea. You need 14mm to get the proper crush on the rings. Tim
 
Hammer said:
Fire Rings do not handle heat cycles very well on a daily driver.On a dedicated puller where they are not as prone to the daily heat cycles you will get alot longer service out of them.Most everyone I know who has bee fire-ringed on the street has to pull the head about every 20-30k and redo the rings and headgasket.Wes Dimig has just done his again for the thrid time due to fire-ring failure and he has now gone to a o-ringed head.

On the O-Rings...
They are only as reliable as the guy who used the tool when they ring your head.If they compromise the ring when they cut the head,like mine was,it willnever seal correctly and your going to end up redoing them again after certain head gasket failure.2 of the O-Rings in my head were actually cut off center and not touching the compression ring which lead to the failure in my truck.The shop who redid the head does not use a hand tool to cut the rings and did a much better job.Another thing on the O-ringed head is theya re only as good as the guy who did the initial torque sequence.If the first round of torque is not done correctly the it will fail alot faster........Andy
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your opinion on fire rings don't jive with Scheids recommendations. Kent Crowder is the one who did the specs for my rebuild. I was going with Arias but, because I told him I'd be DD sometimes he said they wouldn't do. The pistons don't handle heat cycles well but, nothing was mentioned about the rings. I pretty sure if anyone knows these motors... I'd be him !

Once crushed IMO, there's not much that's gonna get through them. It took me 5 retorques within a month to get to where there was no more tightening left. I'm not pushing as much boost as some but, I have no issue about abusing the hell out of it with timing and pressure
 
Fire Rings

Okay, so i cannot find anyone remotely close to me to do o-rings. I talked to Joe Hellman and he does fire rings and he is within 500 miles of me. He said he just machines the groove in the head and runs a modified gasket. I have read that fire rings are not good for daily driver trucks and that they are very unreliable. I have also read that they have to be redone alot. I basically would like to hear from people people that have had some experience with fire rings, if these statements are true. I would also like to know what you think would be best for my truck. Thanks for all of your help.
 
by no means i would say they are very unreliable. Maybe when they first came out but they have since changed the ring material and have proven to be good as a daily driver modification.
IMHO less to go wrong with orings on a DD but thats just me.
 
I have been battling a loss of power in my truck for about the last year or so it just seemed like it was getting slower and slower. Last fall I was at a local diesel shop and He asked me if I had found the problem yet . I said no. He said that they have found the same problem on several CR trucks that were just losing power. They pulled the heads on them and found that the gaskets were blown between the cylinders . The gaskets never leaked coolant but the trucks kept losing power, That is why I decided to pulll my head and see sure enough it was blown between the cylinders. The bad thing about the MLS gasket is you don't know when it is blown it heals itself back up till you put some pressure on it. I had mine torqued to 145# and it still blew. So now I am setting it up in the CNC and cutting o-rings in it.
 
styx53 said:
Okay, so i cannot find anyone remotely close to me to do o-rings. I talked to Joe Hellman and he does fire rings and he is within 500 miles of me. He said he just machines the groove in the head and runs a modified gasket. I have read that fire rings are not good for daily driver trucks and that they are very unreliable. I have also read that they have to be redone alot. I basically would like to hear from people people that have had some experience with fire rings, if these statements are true. I would also like to know what you think would be best for my truck. Thanks for all of your help.
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i sent my head to van and he had mine cut for fire rings. now, mine are only in the head. my gasket is modified for them to work and i have 20-25 hooks, god knows how much street punishment, and going on 20k miles. i only had to re-torque 3 times and have had no issue other than a a-1 12mm stud breaking on the initial re-torque after starting the truck. which resulted in having to pull the head back off (talk about mad) but i have had not one problem, when i pulled the head back off you could see that aprox 40-50 thousandths mashes flat on the block. he told me that i would probably be better off with the fire ring setup for what i do. i hit between 55 and 65psi and have not had a problem yet. i personally like the fire rings better for the fact that you are only trying to seal two surfaces where as the o ring you are trying to seal not only the head and the block, you now have to try to seal the o-ring to the gasket. the o ring just seems like a cheap fix to me. but its all opinion, to each his own i suppose.
 
I have orings with .010 protrusion. My 12mm studs are torqued to 140lbft & it is holding great. I'm using the stock 24v gasket.
 
o ring

not to hijack but what headgasket are you guys running with o-rings. just had mine o ring and looking for a good headgasket.
 
cummis1998 said:
not to hijack but what headgasket are you guys running with o-rings. just had mine o ring and looking for a good headgasket.
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stock cummins! I have a .010 with mine and no cold weather issues. Drops compression about .5
 
I had Tim Barber do my head. They CNC machined it to within .001" from front to back and side to side. They then CNC'd it for the o-rings. When I got the head back I couldn't even feel or see were the wire ended and began. I'm running a .010" modified 12 valve marine HG. My head is setup the same as the one on tim's 04 minus the 625+ studs and he's running over 100psi of boost and over 1000rwhp on fuel only and its holding up just fine.

The only problem I had was a blown headgasket from coolant pressure. The coolant pressure blew all the material from the headgasket around the back coolant port. This happened at the track and the truck was at full operating temp before the WOT runs. After I pulled the head I saw were the o-rings were seating and they were dead inline with the center of the gasket firering.
 
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