The Total Seal rings can be kinda scary, I have used them for many years in turbo Buicks and never had a problem. I have seen these rings do things that were amazing like dry up and engine that used to push
oil out of every orofice when it hit boost.
But now I am having
oil consumption problems with my 2000' Lightning. The engine got a complete rebuild using CP piston (+.020) and a file to fit ring set.....at the last minute I substituted a new Total Seal gapless top ring. Now the truck uses probably a quart to 150/200 miles and the
oil breathers are dry for once in its life. I have put a vacuum on the crankcase and that helped but didn't nearly solve the problem. My thinking is that the Lightning came with a low tension oil ring, stock and somehow the gapless top ring has thrown things out of wack. When the truck was stock it had a blowby problem...the oil breathers were wet all the time and dribbled down the side of the vavle covers, it was ugly.
Now the breathers run dry and there is no blowby problem to be seen but now it uses oil.
I think the stock low tension oil ring needed a certain amount of blowby to keep the oil down in the cylinder and keep oil cosumption under control. If this is the problem then it is definately my fault for mixing and matching piston rings.
Oh well I wanted to pull the motor and mess with it some more anyway.......sorry to ramble but I was hoping some of this might help someone else.
Dale