Just honed my 340 and put in new rings. Now the engine is pretty tough to turn over. I checked the ring gap so I know that shouldnt be an issue. Will the engine be harder to turn over until the rings are broke in?

New engines are alweays stiffer to turn over because all the parts are tight like they should be not sloppy like a worn motor.

Yes, a fresh engine will be harder to turn over.

Did you clean the piston grooves well? New rings shouldnt be too hard to turn over---just how hard IS hard? You should be able to turn it by hand with a wrench on the front nut

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New rings shouldnt be too hard to turn over

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But there still should be more resistance with new rings than old worn out rings.

i don't think so. when i reringed my 440 along with bearings and hone i didn't really notice any difficulty turning over. is this with the starter or just by hand that you notice a difference?

I agree did you clean the ring grooves out really well?? Also did all the bearing caps go back together with the bearing lock tabs facing each other...

this is by hand. it just seems quite a bit harder to turn that i figured it would be. and yeah i turned all the bearings toward each other but ill recheck em

Put a beam or dial type torque wrench on the damper bolt. You should see around 25 foot lbs. of rotational torque to spin it.

did not see your response to cleaning ring grooves, this has nothing to do with your ? but did you NOT line up your ring gaps? hope not!

I cleaned out the ring grooves really good and made sure the rings could move freely in the groove and not stick. I turned the oil rings like the instructions said but it just said to go my manufactuer specs on the compression rings. I had a book that said to turn the gaps completely opposite of each other. Is this wrong?

no, that is correct.
Did you use a torque wrench yet to turn the motor?

BTW, this is Lew (with the whiplash 340 Cuda). I'm in MO on my son's account.

Yes it will turn noticabley harder do to tighter fit of the rings on the walls creating more drag. Seals are tight on the shaft yet and have not mated to the shaft and everything is fresh and needs to mate up. As for the lining up the the ring gaps, o you shouldn't line them up but if perchance they did line up on installation don't worry about it, in a very short time they won't be. The rings do not sit in the same spot on the piston as the engine is running, they should be turning in the groove as the engine runs.

Do you have the plugs in it?

Also one thing I have seen was when the top ring gets worn it is rounded over at the top because of the ridge at the top of the bore. Now you just put fresh square rings in the bore and that top corner will bind against the ridge. This is why I will just have an engine bored if there is a hint of a ridge. One more aspect of a re-ring is when there is a big ridge you get a lot of bore taper, this will leave a wedge shaped open space between the bore and the face of the ring but this is more of a sealing issue than a friction/drag issue.

If I ever have a engine that is burning oil through the rings AND has a big ridge AND I can not afford new pistons the best option in my opinion is to pull the pistons and carefully remove the rings clean every thing with a strong solvent like carb dip, then re install the old rings after very thouroly cleaning them and make sure they are in the same bore and faceing the same direction. Cleaning them will free them up where they can push on the bore easier and allow them to push on the bore again, also removeing them stretches them a tad and allows them to once again push on the bore. Again this is only a stop gap way of temporairly fixing an engine, the only real way to fix an engine this bad is with boreing and new pistons.

The plugs are not in the engine. Before I put the heads on I put oiled the cylinders up The piston could go up and down once and the cylinders would be almost completely dry of oil. Ill check it with a torque wrench tomorrow if I get the chance to!

There's a breakaway torque spec for rebuilt engines. You place a torque wrench on the front of the engine and note the amount of torque the wrench indicates before the engine starts to turn. I think i know what it is , but I'm not 100% sure so hopefully someone has the actual number near.
The purpose of this check is to make sure you haven't screwed something up during the rebuild (ie wrong bearings, seals, rings, wrong fits etc)

Is all the valve train on?? If you have the heads on and no lifters,pushrods and rockers on it WILL turn very hard and or slow if almost not at all.
EDIT: I see you said the plugs were not in yet, so what I said dosen't matter.

It takes about 50-55 ft lbs of torque to turn the engine over. The cylinders probably have next to no oil on them so that could be part of the reason but still I didnt think itd be that hard.

One time I was putting an engine back together and as I was knocking a piston into the bore one of the oil rings got caught on the edge of the deck, pulling about half of it out of the ring land and wedging between the piston and cylinder wall. I didn't even realize it until I tried to turn the engine over with a ratchet and it was very hard...I wasn't sure what it could be until I noticed a piece of the ring stuck beside one of the pistons. Luckily only a small area of wall was scratched, I replaced that ring and never had a problem with it after. I'm not saying this is what is causing your problem but maybe it's an idea?

Whatever I used was stuff they gave me with some new crank brearings for another engine I done. I unhooked the valvetrain and its showing around 40 ft lbs. I guess Ill run it... the cylinders all look fine. I did notice some of them have a grey powdery stuff on them now.. is that from the rings breaking in?

Gesh, start it up and forget about it. I haven't done an engine in a long time but I was so anxious to see if it worked I couldn't stand it. Check out my hemi here. Vroom, vroom Kim

I did oil them.

do you know ring tension for each cylinder?