I just picked up a set of stock bore 4.065 JE 2618 forged -5cc flattop pistons for my ls3 for cheap on fleabay. They are gas ported with assemetrical skirts and offset piston pins.
I'm just curious if anyone has run the JEs in their turbo builds and what you thought about them. I'm running sbe right now, but figured I would start to accumulate parts to forge the bottom end for later down the road.

 

I've been surfing around, looking for smoken deals on rods, but I wonder if I'd be just as well off to hone the small end slightly on my gen 4 rods to fit the .945 wrist pins that the JE pistons use and load the stock rods up with some ARP fasteners. The forged pistons and ARP bolts should add quit a bit of strength to the stock bottom end and give me a little more insureance against a catastrophic failure.
I'm not planning to push much past 15psi or 1000fwhp .
Whatchaw think ? Worth new rods, or just fit the gen 4s with good ARP hardware ?

 

JE make extremely good pistons. As long as they have been selected correctly for the application, then there are no concerns

 

Thanks, stevie.
any ideas on the connecting rod delema. ? Been cramming on what's out there in a budget price range . Right now at the top of the pile is the Summit rods at 499 . They have a set that fits my pistone, ie 6.098 long and set up for .945 floating pins. If they are all that Summit claims, it will be hard to do much better for less that 600 bucks.. 1200hp rated for a turbo build. With those and the good forgings of the JE pistons , that leaves the crank as the weak link. Should be plenty strong enough for my 1000fwhp or 800ish wheel goals.
that's where I am now hp wise , with the sbe short block . All I've done is pull all the pistons and open the ring gaps and installed head studs .

 

If you're just using a stock size rod....OEM gen4 rods seem cheapest.

But if you're buying rods and pistons, it would make more sense to go for the typical 6.125" rod with 0.927" pin and piston. But then you say you already have the pistons....which more than likely are for the latter rod, as opposed to stock rod dimensions which you seem to be suggesting ?

 

The pistons are set up for the stock rod specs. 6.098 to 6.100 and they have the .945 wrist pins and spiro locks.
I have the gen 4 rods in the engine now, so that would just be a piston swap, but I would have to have the stock rods small end honed slightly to fit the .945 pins. I'm sure balancing would be expected with new pistons. It seems like alot of work just to swap pistons out and leave the stock rods in as the weak link. Roughly 80.00 to resize the rods after the ARP bolt swap, I'd guess at least 50 .00 to hone the small end to fit the pins, and a ballpark 120.00 to 200.00 for rod bolts. That's at least 250.00 just to keep the weaker rods in play. Unless the gen 4 rods can handle 800 rwhp easily , it just seems like a wasted effort and 250 bucks added to the inexpensive gen 4 rods cost.
the part I just dont know is what can the gen 4 rods handle, not squeak by with, but shrug off. I've always believed rpms are what kills rods and not so much the tq or hp. My rev limiter is set at 6500, but I find myself shifting around 6000rpms most of the time.
thoughts?

 

The summit rods are already set up for the .945 pins and have ARP2000 7/16 bolts for 500 bucks. So really only roughly 250 bucks difference in price if you factor machining and bolts for the stock rods.

 

No reason to throw aftermarket pistons on stock rods. Especially for that power goal. Almost better off buying another SBE, refreshing it, and have it ready.

 

Texas Speed has some very budget friendly rods as well.

 

If the pistons are intended for stock rods, why would you need to machine the stock rods ?

Really...no mater what you want to do, there are multiple cheap options

 

yea, I looked at TS website. They didnt have anything that compared to the summit rod " on paper". I thing K1 makes the summit rods. On summits website if you filter down to 6.098 rods, the only 2 that shows up are the house brand and K1. The specs are identical except they list the summits at 4 grams heavier. Likely to try and avoid specing identical, since summit keeps thjeir.manufacturers a secret. Biggest difference was the price 605.00 for K1, 499.00 for summit. K1 doesnt give a hp rating either. Summit break the rating down for different setups...NA, supercharged % nitrous, then turbo. They also give a max safe piston speed, which is really cool imo. I havent calculated the max rpm for a 3.622 stroke but summit says 7500rpm max generically.

 

the pistons are just the same compression height as a stock piston . I dont know why JE felt they needed to make their wrist pins at .945, but several piston manufacturers offer pistons with the same pin spec. The stock gen 4 rod is supposedly .943. My guess is you could run them press fit like they are or hone them out a couple thou and use the spiro locks.

 

Stevie,
JE offers the same design piston in a 6.125 rod with the .92x wrist pin . The ones I picked up used just happened to be the stock compression height. If I had bought new ones , I likely would have got the same ones so I could keep the oil ring out of the wrist pin area. The JEs have a funky, lightweight skirt design with the major thrust side alot wider than the minor thrust side, so even at the longer piston length, I'm not putting heavy pistons in the engine. Win/win

 

thanks for the input , but I'm running a 6.2 and another sbe shortblock is a little pricey for me to have laying around just in case . It's not a car I have to depend on right now, but the ls3 shortblock in it has less than 1000 miles on it . All I've done is regap the rings. The car is running great at about 14lbs , so I'm not in a bind to tear it down and rebuild it. I just got a great deal on the pistons and I'm trying to figure out the best option to beef the bottom end up for CHEAP , but with solid parts.

 

Why do you think you need pistons to meet goal?

 

I dont. The car is doing it now . But the older I get the more I like insureance. I've turned the engine up higher than my comfort level on the sbe . I'm still gonna run it , but since i got a great deal on the pistons , I'm already ahead of the game on cost, so why not look into getting an insureance upgrade

 

Adding forged pistons to stock rods isn't going to give you any more insurance.

 

I agree......been looking for a deal on some decent rods. Found a set of eagle esp h beams that fit my piston specs for 460.00 shipped new. That's the best bang for buck so far.

 

That's a good deal

 

I'd pay the extra $40 for the summit rods. I was told by numerous people that the eagle rods usually arent sized correctly whereas the summit ones were. When I called texas speed to purchase a set of eagle rods, he didnt even want to sell those to me. he kept hinting not to buy them. Now i know why.