Hi there! I hope this isn’t a dumb question, but I see people talking about the process of gapping piston rings. I’m in the process of rebuilding a 1.8 to turbo and just wanted to know if that’ll be necessary.

Im using stock pistons and rods, hastings piston rings all in standard size. my engine isn’t bored out. Do I still need to gap them or do they come already to size. Thanks!

 

You will need to check and set the gap on all of them...or pay somebody to do the work. If you're lucky they'll be close to spec and if you're not turbocharging or supercharging the engine, OEM gap specs will be fine.

 

argh, I am turbocharging it..
okay, I will do them. thank you!

 

No offense but this is a super-duper critical part of building an engine, and something you will always have to do on any engine build.

For a turbo motor you’re probably gonna want to go to the looser end of spec, but you should do more research on it, I’m not as familiar with exact specs when building for boost.