Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

  Any advantage to chrome rings over standard Briggs OEM rings on a 5-11hp engine?

  Anyone familiar with Rotary rings? 

Chrome rings are harder so they will last longer.  But because they are harder they can cause greater cylinder wear.  Neither one is probably an issue with normal
OPE use.

Some info I found on chrome rings:

"One of the shortcomings of coated steel rings is seen more on the performance side. Richards says if you put a coated ring into a cylinder where there's high pressure and heat for short bursts (such as drag racing) and you detonate the motor, you may flake the moly or chrome off the ring, ruining the cylinder, piston and ring in the process.

Chrome has very good wear properties, but it's not very resistant to scuffing. If you have high load or marginal lubrication, it begins to break down in contact with the cylinder wall and will eventually lead to seizure.

"There is a tradeoff with chrome," says Mahle's Grilliot, "which is why many manufacturers moved to moly coated rings, which have excellent resistance to scuffing. But the downside to moly is it has very high wear characteristics."

I agree with JRT.  Chrome rings are likely a good choice for OPE due to wear characteristics.

lve used both on many rebuilds...and to be honest i havent seen much if any difference at all... although i rebuilt a kohler 341 16hp years ago and i used chromolly rings...and the engine still buffed a bit of smoke for a good month or so until the rings seated in properely...that would be the only disadvantage that i can see is break in time is longer than standard rings...but i guess that really not a disadvantage...

The chrome rings that we used were for service installs on enignes that were not oversized,   the rings as said before have their benefits and drawbacks...One of the biggest difffrences I saw was athe "free-floating-spring-loaded-dual- wiper oil ring" for better oil consumption management...

They seemed to do the trick---we seemed always to get good results with them..

Friiy

Sorry Trouts,

We  used Rotory rings all the time in our own stuff,   but for customers we would use the OPE stuff because of the dealer agreements we had with the manufacturer.

...but the rotory "rebuild kits" were great for the price,   aned we never had a problem with any of them..  (gaskets, rings , seals and such)

---Friiy