Which piston to order Wiseco or Mahle?
Staging Lane
Joined: Jun 2013
Posts: 90
Likes: 39
Having built a few thousand LSx engines I have always used Wiseco for most of the builds we do.
We saw a lot of failures with the lower end Mahle Powerpacks in Houston where everything has NOS so that's a lot of what's to blame.
This was mostly from 8-10 years ago but quit using them for most of the higher power builds.
I think as the Mahles coming apart were the weaker 4032 pistons.
We did have some weird blowby and noise problems with the first Mahle Powerpacks too but I think that was fixed later.
We saw a lot of failures with the lower end Mahle Powerpacks in Houston where everything has NOS so that's a lot of what's to blame.
This was mostly from 8-10 years ago but quit using them for most of the higher power builds.
I think as the Mahles coming apart were the weaker 4032 pistons.
We did have some weird blowby and noise problems with the first Mahle Powerpacks too but I think that was fixed later.
Staging Lane
Joined: Jun 2013
Posts: 90
Likes: 39
In Houston it seems NA means 200 shot or less and with the wrong plugs and too much timing usually too!
Seen tons of blown up older Mahle 4032 pistons where as the same Mahles, Wisecos, JEs, Diamonds, Probes etc. in 2618 just melt so at least not as catostrophic a blowup but rather a melt down.
4032 is probably a better extreme long term use as its harder for the ring lands etc but it's a riskier material with more "street" builds and tuners for sure!
They all blow up with bad tuning or excessive power adder use it's just how they blow up.
The original Mahle Powerpaks had really thin lands too which probably helped NA power a little but definitely didn't like power adders. I think now they have both 4032 and 2618 depending on which pistons but at first they were all 4032 so they changed to thicker lands and 2618 on some ala Wiseco.
Ring gaps also play a huge roll in making power. Obviously what works for an NA app is completely different from power adder as more power means more heat, greater expansion and as an engine/rings get more worn, now oil gets introduced to the combustion process. The almighty detonation demon always finds your weak link and too often the piston gets blamed for the lands butting together and breaking off a piston chunk. Things really go awry when the rod and piston then try to compress said piston chunk against the quench part of the head......
