I free'd a stuck piston, now what?

[Jason in TX]

Hey all. I recently purchased a "running chassis" from a guy that street rodded a 1934 Ford. It was in a high end car collection prior to his purchasing the car, and a concourse winner. When he bought the car, he drove it and it blew a head gasket. He drained the milky oil, put new oil in, changed the head gasket and then parked it.

When I went to look at it, the engine was stuck, but everything else operated very well, and I took a chance on it.

I pulled the passenger head, found rust, cleaned out the rust that I could see. I used lots of Marvel Mystery Oil and Gibbs and managed to free the siezed piston ring(s) from the cylinder wall. It now turns over very smoothly, and is not scratching the cylinder bore.


1) Should I get a new head gasket and bolt the head back on and fire it up?

2) Should I pull the piston and brush off the rings and put the single piston back and fire it up?

3) Should I re-ring this one piston with some NOS Ford rings that I got at Hershey? (yeah, I read modern Hastings rings are better than these ancient rings, but I'm guessing that the pistons might all have old rings. Maybe not.)

4)Do I re-ring the entire engine even though 7 cylinders are probably fine?

Pictures. Everyone loves pictures.