Are my pistons damaged too much? Pictures

[TylerDurden]

How many total miles on the rings/pistons?

[james277553]

184,000 miles   
Never been touch from what I know of the Car.
Its decided, the full rebuild is going to wait till next year, i'm going to stick head back on and drive till it dies by then I hope to put some money aside. I also need a car on the road again as its my daily drive. Thanks for all the advice.

[745 turbogreasel]

Mine looked that bad 40,000 miles ago at 230,000???Mi. You'll be fine, but he rings are probably getting long in the tooth.

[smutts]

That must be some brutal heat, as the SB and RA engines have a steel insert in the crown of the piston that's why the crown is two tone. If it's been veggied, the piston rings have probably got stuck with burnt glycerine too.

[james277553]

well got engine all fired and all sounded sweet as a nut, was so happy that would be able to drive my golf again rather than my other halfs Ford focus( boring    ) I left it ticking over for few mins and then gave engine a few revs (1500 or so), next things I know I'm getting sprayed with oil from my turbo and discover it has managed to spring a major oil leak from its shaft seal and oil sprays out of outlet all over engine, After turning engine off I discover oil has poured from exhaust side and is pouring from intake side, not a pretty site.
 It seemed fine when the head came off so don't know what changed. I turned the engine over a *** loads before firing it up to ensure oil would have got to turbo and round engine, but I'm assuming it must have still been dry in the turbo and killed the seal.
Not happy not cause I've got to strip turbo off with enigne in the car and would have been so much easier with head off.
 Arghhh. 

[james277553]

P.s Is there any possible way me doing something wrong with a head gasket change would cause turbo to fail like this, just being paranoid now as I don't want to change turbo and same thing happens again. I've checked all the oil lines and water lines to turbo and everything is as it should be. Racking my brain trying to think what the hell I've done wrong.
Time to pack up and sleep on it I think   

[james277553]

Well I learn I big lesson there, I found the problem and was my own stupid fault. What a massive twat.
When engine was being cleaned I put a piece of rag in turbo oil outlet to stop crap getting in the hole and damaging turbo! ha ha.
Of course it turned black with oil and i didn't spot it before putting head back on.
Now i've caused a major cock up and only got my self to blame.
Well if you don't mind I'm just going to go and beat my self round the head with a massive spanner whilst swearing endlessly.    f***************************************************************************************************k

[8v-of-fury]

ooooooooh, expensive mistake that is. Its a shame.

I never put rags in anything just for this reason.. I usually never forget anything such as this while working on an engine.. but its possible as you have just witnessed. Few specs of dirt would have done much less damage, if any.

[745 turbogreasel]

So it leaked due to oil backpressure for 15 minutes?  take the rag out and give it a shot, it's not like there is a rubber seal to blow out of place.

[TylerDurden]

^^^Agree.^^^

Maybe you just made a mess. Clearly, oil was being fed to the bearing.

[james277553]

yeah I'm normally the person who takes 3 times longer to do a job on car cause I'm always checking and double checking what I'm doing. I think I did one too many evenings working on the car.
the engine was only running for 5-10mins max. I've removed rag already so tomorrow I'll fire it up and see if it still leaks got to be worth a try. cheers for u tips

[burn_your_money]

I kind of did that once. I had the turbo all bolted on and I was about to fire it up when I realized that I wasn't positive I took the rag out of the turbo. What to do, what to do. Thankfully I pulled the turbo because I most definitely did forget the rag in there. No more rags in turbos for me, unless it's a long rag with a tail that can't be missed.

[TylerDurden]

I've removed rag already so tomorrow I'll fire it up and see if it still leaks got to be worth a try. cheers for u tips

Any luck?

[james277553]

Well turbo was dead after my clever stunt! ( thought it might have be oil from before but after third spraying of oil I realised was still leaking)
I fired it back up after removing rag and it was still pouring from all places. I ended up having the fun job of removing turbo from manifold with engine in the car. Luckily the turbo hadn't been on long and I used copper grease on all the bolts when I fitted it, its was tricky getting the socket onto bolts but managed it in the end.
I took the turbo apart to see what the insides were like, It was sold to me as a low mileage turbo but from the look of the shaft it had done quite a bit of work. There was also a lot of burnt oil on the inside of heat shield, I assume this shouldn't have been there and suggested it was probably leaking before just not that bad. 
I have since put a T2 turbo on that I had spare, It was unknown condition but seems to be running ok atm. I took the car for a spin today and it felt good, I am running turbo at standard 10psi as i've done head gasket and want to run it all in.
I didn't turn fuel down to start with! my god it was smoking like a train with too much fuel, oops. Was interesting to see how much higher than the norm the egts got, I wasn't even putting my foot down and got 400Oc. I've now tuned fuel down to match psi and its loads better. I Will take it for a good drive tomorrow see how it goes. Now I'm on 1 notch gasket it starts loads better no lumping on start up and sounds happier.   

[air-cooled or diesel]

The cylinders/ring can be fine even when the bores are smooth. My 1.6td bores are smooth & shiny and the compression was >420psi in all holes.

as long as the rings break in properly this is not even a problem, its when you remove pistons (again) that you need to break the smoothness/shine (however you do) then this becomes a concern.