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Background: Got a blown head gasket on a 2002 Honda Civic LX with about 220k miles. Got the head off and taking it to the machine shop to get it cleaned up and re-surfaced.

Thinking about whether we should take the cylinders out and put new rings on and possibly new rod bearings. Not sure if it is worth it or not. To my knowledge, the rings are original as are the rod bearings. Car was burning a bit of oil, don't have a precise measure on how much.

I took a video of the cylinder walls to hopefully show the condition of the cylinder walls:


Appreciate any recommendations!

 
Rep Power: 512

Surface rust aside, the "swirls" on the cleaner part of the cylinder walls look like.. fresh-ish honing marks. If you can find a tool to do a leakdown test with the head off, that's what I'd use to determine if ring replacement was going to be worth it. On the flip side, a set of rings (single piston) is only like $20-25, so since you have most of it apart anyways, might be one of those "might as well" things.

As far as bearings, grab some plastigauge and see if the clearance warrants bearing replacement. If the clearance is within spec, I'd leave 'em.

 
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I'll look for a leakdown test that works with the head off. Didn't realize there was such a test.
As for the rings, don't you have to buy rings specifically to match the current measurement of the cylinder wall diameter? So, would need to measure this... I have a digital caliper measuring tool (harbor freight) but it would measure the top of the cylinder. I suspect we'd want to measure down further a bit. Thoughts?

Never heard of plastigauge. Do you need to take off the bottom bracket of the rod to do this test?

 
Rep Power: 512

So, I didn't either until I started viciously googling to see if there was and I saw mentions of it. I was looking to see how definitive the paper test was and stumbled upon that. Paper test requires 2 people (or one crafty one), one to "seal" the top of the cylinder with a piece of paper and one to turn the crank. If there's a good seal on the rings, the movement of the piston should pop the paper like a balloon. Probably best to start this at the bottom of a piston's stroke and let the compression stroke pop the paper. I think it's a quick go/no-go test, so I'm not sure how much acceptable leakage that accounts for (or if it allows for out of spec leakage).

As far as plastigage goes, yeah, it requires bottom end disassembly. It's a soft-ish piece of plastic that you put between the bearing surface and the load (in this case, bearing and crankshaft). Torque it down, and it squishes the plastic to [x] width. The plastigage comes with a visual chart you can use to compare the now deformed plastic width and tolerances. I cannot remember the D17 spec at the moment, but I used it when I had a D17A2 disassembled for the same exact reason we're having this discussion: whether or not to replace the bearings. Squish was within spec, so I just cleaned them up with some brake cleaner and put them back in their races.

here's the "how to use" from their website
https://www.plastigaugeusa.com/how.h...0the%20journal.