B14 Piston and ring failures

PISTON PROBLEMS
Piston problems usually arise from three main causes and these are:
1. Unsatisfactory rubbing conditions between the piston and the cylinder.
2. Excessive operating temperature, usually caused by inadequate cooling or possibly by poor combustion
conditions.
3. Inadequate strength or stiffness of the piston or associated components at the loads which are being applied in
operation.

Skirt scratching and scoring

Characteristics
The piston skirt shows axial scoring marks predom-
inantly on the thrust side. In severe cases there may be
local areas showing incipient seizure.

Causes
Abrasive particles entering the space between the piston
and cylinder. This can be due to operation in a dusty
environment with poor air filtration. Similar damage can
arise if piston ring scuffing has occurred since this can
generate hard particulate debris. More rarely the prob-
lem can arise from an excessively rough cylinder surface
finish.

Piston skirt seizure

Characteristics Skirt scratching
Severe scuffing damage, particularly on the piston skirt
but often extending to the crown and ring lands. The
damage is often worse on the thrust side.

Causes
Operation with an inadequate clearance between the
piston and cylinder. This can be associated with inade-
quate cooling or a poor piston profile. Similar damage
could also arise if there was an inadequate rate of
lubricant feed up the bore from crankshaft bearing
splash.

Piston crown and ring land damage

Characteristics
The crown may show cracking and the crown land and
lands between the rings may show major distortion, often
with the ring ends digging in to the lands.

Causes
Major overheating caused by poor cooling and in diesel
engines defective injectors and combustion. The prob-
lem may arise from inadequate cylinder coolant flow or
from the failure of piston cooling arising from blocked
oil cooling jets.

Skirt seizure

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Misaligned pistons
Characteristics
The bedding on the skirt is not purely axial but shows
diagonal bedding.

Causes
Crankshaft deflections or connecting rod bending.
Misalignment of rod or gudgeon pin bores.

Cracking inside the piston

Characteristics
Cracks near the gudgeon pin bosses and behind the ring
grooves.

Causes
Diagonal skirt bedding
Inadequate gudgeon pin stiffness can cause cracking in
adjacent parts of the piston, or parts of the piston cross
section may be of inadequate area.

RING PROBLEMS
The most c o m m o n problem with piston rings is scuffing of their r u n n i n g surfaces. Slight local scuffing is not u n c o m m o n
in the first 20 to 50 hours of r u n n i n g from new when the rings are bedding in to an appropriate operating profile.
However the condition of the ring surfaces should progressively improve and scuffing damage should not spread all
r o u n d the rings.

Scuffing of cast iron rings

Characteristics
Local zones around the ring surface where there are
axial dragging marks and associated surface roughening.
Detailed examination often shows thin surface layers of
material with a hardness exceeding 1000 Hv and com-
posed of non-etching fine grained martensite (white
layer).

Causes
Can arise from an unsuitable initial finish on the cylinder
surface. It can also arise if the rings tend to bed at the top
of their r u n n i n g surface due to unsuitable profiling or
from thermal distortion of the piston.

Scuffed cast iron rings

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B14 Piston and ring failures

Scuffing of chromium plated piston rings

Characteristics
The presence of dark bands r u n n i n g across the width of
the ring surface usually associated with transverse cir-
cumferential cracks. In severe cases portions of the
c h r o m i u m plating may be dragged from the surface.

Causes Scuffed chromium plated rings

Unsuitable cylinder surface finish or p o o r profiling of
the piston rings. C h r o m i u m plated top rings n e e d to
have a barelled profile as installed to avoid hard bedding
at the edges.
In some cases the p r o b l e m can also arise from p o o r
quality plating in which the plated surface is excessively
rough or globular and can give local sharp areas on the
ring edges after machining.

Severely damaged chromium plate

MACHINED SURFACE
OF THE RING

CHAMFER AT EDGE
OF THE PLATING. v

GLOBULAR FINISH CAN

CREATE LOCAL SHARP EDGES.

The edge of a piston ring

Rings sticking in their grooves

Characteristics
The rings are found to be fixed in their grooves or very
sluggish in motion. T h e r e may be excessive blow by or oil
consumption.

Causes
The ring groove temperatures are too high due to
conditions of operation or p o o r cooling. The use of a
lubricating oil of inadequate quality can also aggravate
the problem.

A stuck piston ring

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CYLINDER PROBLEMS
Problems with cylinders tend to be of three types:
1. R u n n i n g in problems such as bore polishing or in some cases scuffing.
2. Rates of wear in service which are high and give r e d u c e d life.
3. O t h e r problems such as bore distortion arising from the engine design or cavitation erosion damage of the water side
of a cylinder liner, which can penetrate t h r o u g h to the bore.

Bore polishing
Characteristics
Local areas of the bore surface b e c o m e polished and oil
c o n s u m p t i o n and blow by tend to increase because the
piston rings do not then bed evenly a r o u n d the bore.
The polished areas can be very hard thin, wear-resistant
'white' layers.

Causes
The build up of hard carbon deposits on the top land of
the piston can r u b away local areas of the bore surface
and remove the controlled surface roughness required
to bed in the piston rings.
If there is noticeable bore distortion from structural Bore polishing
deflections or thermal effects, the resulting high spots
will be preferentially s m o o t h e d by the piston rings.
The chemical nature of the lubricating oil can be a
significant factor in both the hard carbon build-up and
in the polishing action.

High wear of cast iron cylinders

Characteristics
Cylinder liners wear in n o r m a l service due to the action
of fine abrasive particles drawn in by the intake air. The
greatest wear occurs near to the TDC position of the top
ring.
Corrosion of a cast iron bore surface can however
release hard flake-like particles of iron carbide from the
pearlite in the iron. These give a greatly increased rate of
abrasive wear.

Causes
Inadequate air filtration when engines are operated in
dusty environments.
Engines operating at too low a coolant temperature,
i.e. below about 80~ since this allows the internal
condensation of water vapour from the combustion
process, and the formation of corrosion pits in the
cylinder surface.

Corrosion of a cast iron bore

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B14 Piston and ring failures

High wear of chromium plated cylinders

Characteristics
An increasing rate of wear with operating time asso-
ciated with the loss of the surface profiling which
provides a dispersed lubricant supply. The surface
becomes smooth initially and then scuffs because of
the unsatisfactory surface profile. This then results in a
major increase in wear rate.

Causes
High rates of abrasive particle ingestion from the
environment can cause this problem. A more likely
cause may be inadequate quality of c h r o m i u m plating
and its finishing process aimed at providing surface
porosity. Some finishing processes can leave relatively
loose particles of c h r o m i u m in the surface which Abbrasive turn round marks at TDC
become loose in service and accelerate the wear
process.

Bore scuffing
Characteristics
Occurs in conjunction with piston ring scuffing. The
surface of the cylinder shows areas where the metal
has been dragged in an axial direction with associated
surface roughening.

Causes
The same as for piston ring scuffing but in addition
the p r o b l e m can be accentuated if the metallurgical
structure of the cylinder surface is unsatisfactory.
In the case of cast iron the material must be
pearlitic and should contain dispersed hard constitu-
A chromium plated liner which has scuffed after
ents derived from phosphorus, c h r o m i u m or vanadium
losing its surface profiling by wear
constituents. The surface finish must also be of the
correct roughness to give satisfactory bedding in of the
piston rings.
In the case of c h r o m i u m plated cylinder liners it is
essential that the surface has an undulating or grooved
profile to provide dispersed lubricant feeding to the
surface.

Cavitation erosion of cylinder liners

Characteristics
If separate cylinder liners are used with coolant in
contact with their outside surface, areas of cavitation
attack can occur on the outside. The material removal
by cavitation continues and eventually the liner is
perforated and allows the coolant to enter the inside
of the engine.

Causes
Vibration of the cylinder liner u n d e r the influence of
piston impact forces is the main cause of this problem
but it is accentuated by crevice corrosion effects if the
outside of the liner has dead areas away from the
coolant flow.

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