Present study was undertaken to investigate the leakage and friction of self-lubricating piston seal rings. A crank-piston type gas leakage test set-up was constructed. The piston rings were made of PTFE-polyimide composite. The free gap configurations of the seal rings were butt and step types. Eccentric tension rings were used to give the seal rings prepressure between the seal rings and cylinder wall. Two sizes of the tension rings were installed to investigate their effect on the gas leakage and friction of the seal rings. The results showed that step type seal rings are superior than the butt types. High tension spring rings resulted in low leakage and high friction loss. In order to reduce the gas leakage and friction loss of the piston seal rings, there should be compromise between the number of ring stages and prepressure of the tension rings.