I picked up a takeout 2000 Camaro LS1 from a car at our shop.
The only issue was broken 2nd and 3rd ring lands on #5 piston. Cylinder wall is perfect.
Engine has but 28K miles on it.

I have a C5 Vette that runs pretty well, but has 95K on it now and piston slaps like a diesel so I'm thinking a nice 383 short block would be cool.

So started to do a little research.
Not an Eagle fan.....but they seem to be the cheapest.
Scat, ok stuff. Kits don't seem to be real configurable.

Texas speed has what look to be decent stuff. Not sure who makes their cranks and rods......but they give nice choices on the parts used. For instance, pistons with varying dish volumes.

Sadly, I didn't find any that use the stock bore size. Seems a shame to bore a basically virgin block! But, prob best to bore the engine to fit the pistons anyway. (Actually, DSS Racing offers in stock bore size, never heard of DSS)

Anyone use any of these kits?
Issues?

I'm just picturing bearing clearances not correct etc.

Ron

 

K1 and Wiesco work together to make an excellent 383 rotating assembly.

Molnar also has a high quality crank & rod set up, that should work well with Wiseco pistons.

Lunati has a sweet crank and rod set up that will be hard to beat on price.

Callies has an excellent crank & rod set that's sweet too.

TSP and several other house brands are very good from what I've read.

Wiesco has the stroker piston design down pat. Their piston clears the reluctor wheel with out clearancing normally. Wiseco also has a good design that doesn't rock at the botton of the bore as much and seals better for less oil consumption.

My Callies Compstar crank, callies rods & Wiesco piston rotating assembly has been perfect in my 383 LS1, no oil consumption issues. It all cleared with little to no extra machine work. The vendor that sold me the crank is long out of business and had balanced it heavy as if for old small block chevy pistons so some heavy metal had to be removed.

Many ​​​even most of these cranks are made off shore and the key difference is the care in machining the crank and the quality control process required by the respective brand. China makes most of these but China offers many different levels of quality. I'm most comfortable with the cranks where final QC & machine work is done in the US.

On another forum one of the former Wheel 2 Wheel (W2W) engine guru's (Billy?, I might be able to find the comments if I dig around) commented he would not use Eagle cranks in engines with his name on them unless the customer agreeded in advance to remachining the crank, turning it .010 under and refinishing it...basically remanufacturing it. He had seem too many Eagle cranks were the throws weren't 90 degrees that had to be straighted and tapered journals, poor hardness and so on. Eagle may have improved.

I had a bad experience with an Eagle crank long ago. All of the money saved by buying Eagle crank for my 72 vettes Dart 400 was spent on machine work so the Eagle crank could be used. Thats was in 2011, and avoid Eagle cranks in my LS projects. Many others seem happy with their Eagle LS crank so YMMV.

Likewise, I'm not a fan of SCAT's lower end budget cranks after having issues with one in a small chevy 383 in 2010.

BTR - Brian Tooley Racing can help with a good quality rotating assembly at a reasonable price matched to your application. I've used TEA heads for a very long time when TEA was Brian's company and Brian has always been honest and an excellent person to do business with in my experience.

Hinson Motorsports will be very competitive on price and are also worth talking too.

Best wishes with your 383 stroker build.

I will leave the toss the LS1 block for the stroker build for a LS2/LS3/LS7 block to others.

FWIW - for my LS2 build, I plan to use Wiseco pistons, Callies Compstar crank & rods.

 

I like Wiseco a lot, I have used them in a lot of LS engines and they work very well. As far as crank and rods, K1 and Callies are very nice. They're better profiled for clearance in stroker applications. Scat makes pretty decent rods for the money; they're better than Eagle IMO.

Also, don't skimp out on honing the cylinders. If you're going to the trouble of buying a stroker kit with new rings, it's worth it to torque plate hone the block.

 

BTR has rotating assemblies on his site. I'd just do the Wiseco and K1 or Compstar rods and crank. I think shipping is free with him. Also the stuff in the configurator is based on what's in stock. Right now he has K1 cranks in stock for 24X (either GM or the LME billet reluctor which you don't need unless you want to run high boost) and both the K1 and Compstar rods (no difference in price - so I'd probably go Compstar). And then you can use the -3cc Wiseco pistons so you can run 62-65cc heads and keep compression around 11.5:1. $2200. https://www.briantooleyracing.com/bu...-assembly.html

Thompson also sells a rotating assembly with K1 Crank and Rods with their custom Diamond pistons. Cost is a little less there. Their K1 Rods don't have the ARP2000 bolts unless you upgrade (but I can't find anything in the K1 catalog that says they offer them this way).

TSP is good too. You can get any combination you want from them and they will balance the assembly before sending it out if you want that.

 

Hi my "balanced" kit is 4.00/4.10 $1795.00 FOB at 1835 BW.

The piston SIZE is your choice (+.003" or ???)

The forged rods, forged crankshaft, steel rings, forged pistons are all well balanced.

Your case may be the block design, a possible problem ?

Would you send a picture of the block front ?

Lance

 

Thanks guys. Great info.
I had looked at Tooley's site (I buy from them whenever possible) and missed the rotating assemblies.

I had Wiseco turbo pistons and Compstar rods put in my L33 last summer. My machinist actually liked the parts. He usually bitches about something.......

The AFR heads on my Vette are milled to 60cc so I would choose the 8cc dish pistons.

Balance and bearings are best left to the builder.

The plan will be to use the cam I have, just replace lifters with some better than the LS7's. Mine are noisy, have been since day one.

Thanks again guys.

Ron