So, Wrinkle's motor has been a slow road... Saved his sheckles and bought a balanced rotating assembly through Jegs or Summit, made by Eagle. It took about a week for that to arrive and it showed as the wrong bore. It was marked .060" on the box but inside were 0.030" pistons and rings. They were also full-float con rods. Because it was a "kit" that's put together by the manufacturer you have to send the whole enchilada back for exchange. A week later the new stuff shows. Right bore this time but the con rods are press fit (pre-hung however). I then got to looking closer and find that the pistons have a reduced compression distance. These are 1.548" vs. the stock 1.560" (-0.012") that we were expecting. These are Speed-Pro hypereutectic jobbers and some listings state they're 1.560" while others say 1.548". I read somewhere that their cast pistons are -.020" and the hypereutectic's are -.012", which I believe. They do this to keep compression down after having the decks resurfaced. Junior got on the phone with Eagle and they told him there's no guarantee as to what pistons you'll find in your box. It's based on whatever is available to them at the time. They even used the term "mystery pistons". At this point he's thinking about sending it all back and piece-mealing it all but that's a bit more $$$. He also had his block "decked" and if you figger that in with a rubber coated steel head gasket (.015") it'd all be pretty close, so let's build it! Everything in the kit is pretty nice and checked out spot-on. Every ring gap was a little under 0.020", Plasti-gauged every journal and they were all 0.002". End play was 0.003". As we buttoned up each corner we measured deck height and found that they really just cleaned up the decks. It's not super square and I'd say they only scrubbed a few thou off. His last motor came back -0.015" and that's what we expected with this one I guess. We wound up about 0.035" in the hole, so with that shim gasket we'll be about 0.050" squish, 0.010" more than we'd like. CR should be about 10:1 assuming the 5cc valve relief volume as advertised. I'm going to get some stuff to cc those before the heads go on to see what they really are. He still has to pick a cam and get that and we'll do a cam timing episode. Stay tuned!
I would highly recommend these Eagle kits as they are economical and high quality. It's just too bad you can't get full compression pistons for sure.
He was up till 6:00am this morning assembling his pal's 383 from another Eagle kit. This one came with two valve relief, full compression pistons as advertised. They mocked it up yesterday, clearanced the block for the stroker then brought it back to the machine shop for cleaning, cam bearings and plugs. This one will see Vortec heads and should also land right at 10:1 (dished pistons).
First pic is one of the lessons learned... Watch them digits when you're rolling the crank over
