Red and green tabs on piston rings

[AarhusTr6]

Hi, using Grant, piston rings I have this red and green tab and the one page manual that comes with it is a bit unclear,  so do I just leave these little tabs on the ring , as my logic would say they would fall off and go into the engine? My understanding is they stop the ring from overlapping.

[harlequin]

Not seen this on Grant rings before, your probably right though as Grant rings have a nasty habit of overlapping

George 

[Kenrow]

From the MG Forum here in the US

Grant Rings

 

[AarhusTr6]

Hi

 

assume left right /red green is irrelevant .   But don’t these tabs drop into sump ?

Edited December 30, 2022 by AarhusTr6

[RobH]

discussed here:

https://www.speed-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11999

[harlequin]

I am very anti Grant rings as I had one of the little tabs come off. The tab didn't cause damage itself but the engine smoked and drunk oil so it had to come appart again. Grrrrrr

The type I had were  similar to the MG photo and didn't have the sticky out bit that you have so maybe the issue has been resolved.

The wrinkly expander ring can go in either way up so no the colours are just to make the end clearly visible 

George 

[RobH]

Interesting take here and a small modification :

 

https://www.triumphexp.com/forum/tr6-tech-forum.2/i-always-love-taking-these-photos-tr6.1250004.1251306/page-2#msg-1251306

Quote

"Grant expanders on their butt ends are marked with colors so you can see it, green on one side, red on the other. If you look at the expander once installed you want to see both the red and green, if you do not, the expander has overlapped, and you need to take back out and try again. Now if this can happen on the workbench, who is to say it can't happen in the ring compressor during installation once you lose your visual of this. I had one of these type oil control rings fail on me a few years back, there is no doubt in my mind, this is what happen. I was about to get to the point where I would custom order Hastings oil control rings for every engine I built, which would just add cost to the build. I decided I would just give the Grant expander ring a closer look and see if i figure why they did this, sure enough I quickly discovered the issue, and created a easy fix. The butt ends of the Grant type expander are canted towards each other, and when viewed from radial depth standpoint, they are shorter that the radial depth of the remainder of the expander, thus allowing them more easily overlap on the butt ends. I played with fitting them into my finish bores, and then decided I would change these butt ends in a manner that would make harder for them to overlap. I simply held the end of the expander with one hand near the butt end, used needle nose pliers with the other hand and bent the expander butt end to more of 90 degree angle, thus making them the same aprox radial depth as the rest of the expander. I test fitted my modified expander back into my finished bore and I was still getting tension at the butt ends, so all as good. I now installed all three pieces of the oil control ring, and on the workbench tried everything I could to get them to overlap, and could not, even installed one with the ring compressor into a bore, then took it back out and sure enough no overlap "