Does anyone have a picture of what the circllip should look like when it is correctly installed into the piston. I feel like maybe I did not get it far enough in the groove but I could not get the piston pin to go in any farther. I have the circlip in ridge I belive I just cant tell.

 

no pictures but it should snap into groove and you should be able to spin it wit a small screw drier , that way you know its seated , did you get a new wrist pin and keepers with the piston?

 

I could not get either end to spin but one end definantly seated because it snapped in. This is a new wrist pin and keepers. The problem is I lost one of the new keepers so I used one of the old ones. The old one is the one that seated perfectly. It seems to have a larger gap than the new one on the other end. When it popped in it opened up quite a bit once it got inside the ridge. But on the other end it did not open up as far but there was no way to push the wrist pin any farther to allow it room. It apeared to me it was in the groove but just did not look the same.

 

If the circlip is installed incorrectly, how long would it take to fail? would it fail immediatly or over time?

 

Shouldn't take long for clip to pop out and ride up cylinder wall and score it up! USUALLY a short period of time! I've had to re bore cylinders that have been gouged out by the circlip and piston pin on some customer installed pistons,usually takes a couple oversizes to clean up,plus we have had one KTM plated cylinder that had to be replated for the same reason. MAKE SURE the open ends of the circlip are seated and open ends facing UP,not SIDEWAYS in piston. This way compression on the circlip wont cause it to pop out also! Most instructions explain this with piston kit. Good luck OPT