Rusty NOS piston rings? (1 Viewer)

[lelandEOD]

So I ordered a set of NOS piston rings from a vendor and what I got definitely puts the "OS" in NOS.

It looks like these got damp in storage at some point and all six have varying degrees of rust on the compression and oil scraper rings. At first, I was livid - why on earth would a well established vendor sell me damaged parts??? I'm a bit calmer now and thought before I call them tomorrow and complain, I should probably ask the 40-crowd what the collective opinion is on rusty rings? I don't like the thought of putting these in my not-so-cheap 3FE rebuild, but want to know if this is typical and/or harmless and I've just never heard of it?


The packaging was clearly water damaged so it's not like they just didn't know before they shipped them out.

Thoughts???

 

[RustyNailJustin]

If you can't knock the flash rust off with a light scotch Brite. I personally wouldn't run them.
If there is pitting in them don't use them.

 

[mtweller]

No chance in hell I'd put those in a fresh rebuild myself. They may be fine, but why chance it?

 

[lelandEOD]

If you can't knock the flash rust off with a light scotch Brite. I personally wouldn't run them.
If there is pitting in them don't use them.

Yeah, hell no. They're going back. The vendor is shipping out a replacement set so they are making it right in my book.

 

[sadam_husain]

I wouldn't be happy using anything in that condition, who ever packaged and sent them out to you would have known they were in a water damaged condition, don't jump off the deep end with the vendor talk to them first

 

[shaneus]

Rings are made of cast iron , this is because cast iron wears hard when oiled and hot. I may be wrong but I think if you have surface corrosion, you also have corrosion in the metal. The big issue is ring breakage. A broken ring will score a goove in the cylinder wall and have low compression. I would not run a rusty ring. Rings are as common as pig tracks. There are so many sizes commonly available, that unless I had worn out all other options, I would say to hell with the ones in your pics.

Sorry dude, you are looking at the part that means runs good or smokes and has low power.