My buddy learned the hard way that @reese_chen is off base. He bought the cheapest rings for his rebuild. They looked fine, but they were brittle. One cracked during install, another shattered under heat. He had to tear the whole thing down again after fifty miles because they wouldn't seal. That was a very expensive lesson in material quality.

My old landlord did this exact thing with vinyl plank over a wet basement floor. It's the same mindset that puts cheap fixes on public infrastructure, like patching a pothole instead of repaving the whole road. We're surrounded by systems built for short term wins that guarantee a bigger bill later. It feels like the whole economy runs on skipping the prep work now and calling it efficiency.

Saw a whole article about that last week.