Car Modding, Motorsport, Formula 1

Piston rings are subject to wear as they move up and down the cylinder bore due to their own inherent load and due to the gas load acting on the ring. To minimize this, they are made of wear-resistant materials, such as cast iron and steel, and are coated or treated to enhance the wear resistance. Two-stroke port design is critical to ring life. Newer modern motorcycle manufacturers have many single function but serrated ports to retain the ring. Typically, top ring and oil control rings will be coated with Chromium, or Nitrided, possibly plasma sprayed or have a PVD (physical vapour deposit) ceramic coating. For enhanced scuff resistance and further improved wear, most modern diesel engines have top rings coated with a modified chromium coating known as CKS or GDC, a patent coating from Goetze which has aluminium oxide or diamond particles respectively included in the chrome surface. The lower oil control ring is designed to leave a lubricating oil film, a few micrometres thick on the bore, as the piston descends. Three piece oil rings, i.e. with two rails and one spacer, are used for four-stroke gasoline engines.

Most automotive pistons have three rings: The top two while also controlling oil are primarily for compression sealing (compression rings); the lower ring is for controlling the supply of oil to the liner which lubricates the piston skirt and the compression rings (oil control rings). Typical compression ring designs will have an essentially rectangular cross section or a keystone cross section. The periphery will then have either a barrel profile (top compression rings) or a taper napier form (second compression rings). There are some taper faced top rings and on some old engines simple plain faced rings were used.

Oil control rings typically are of three types: (1) single piece cast iron, (2) helical spring backed cast iron or steel, or (3) multipiece steel. The spring backed oil rings and the cast iron oil rings have essentially the same range of peripheral forms which consist of two scraping lands of various detailed form. The multipiece oil control rings usually consist of two rails or segments (these are thin steel rings) with a spacer expander spring which keeps the two rails apart and provides the radial load.