In the grand scheme of things considering what we spend on our cars $300ish isn’t much to spend to have a rotating assembly balanced. Drop in no balance pistons would be cool, but I’d find somewhere else to save $300 rather than skip balancing.

Agreed. I think it’s more important to have a well engineered piston with meat in the right places than to have to comprise the design just to try to avoid balancing.

We don’t have to agree that’s perfectly ok by me if someone does things differently. I thought you lived in Texas? Seems like most of the top LS builders are in your state. Honestly if I was in Texas I wouldn’t be doing my own work I’d load it on a trailer and let the pros down there build it lol.

I live in louisiana. It pains me to pay someone else to do something for me. That’s why I learned to weld, build transmissions, powdercoat, lathe/mill. Etc.

I can agree with that. I’m also of the buy once cry once mindset of spending a little extra to do it right might save a lot of time, work, and money fixing things later that could of been avoided.

Ok, for some reason I thought you lived in Texas, sorry about that. I do most of my own work also just because of the cost to pay someone else. If money wasn’t a factor I’d let better people build it for me. I will say this RPM trans has been money well spent. I know nothing about transmission building and I love this thing.

not to muck up this thread, but let me tell you a short story. This actually has relevance to why I want drop in pistons. And I’d buy them if available too. I have a 5.3 I’m going to be budget building. Anyways. Short two stories. Took my crank to a local shop that supposedly has a good reputation. Had them turn it because I was freshening the engine. Got crank back. Got pissed. They left no radius in the journal. I called the shop. They told me it’s fine. I told them I spin this enginev7800 rpm in the regular and this motor makes over 500hp. Because I was a young “kid”, I suspect they thought I was full of it (dynoed 447rwhp btw) and sent me on my way. Yep, 300 miles later, I was picking up pieces of my motor off the street. Crank broke in 3 pieces. Where? In the non existent journal radius. Think that shop didn’t anything about it? Nope.
Second story. Take new rotating assembly to another shop have “balanced”. Build engine. Has a nice harmonic around 3500rpm. Try to chase it down. Then one day I lose oil pressure. Pull pan, pickup that was tack welded in the pump was broke off. Ok. Buy late model pump with bigger fatter pickup tube. Of course I make sure it’s the right depth. Tack it. Same thing happens in a couple months. Wtf. Yea, it’s vibrating so bad, it’s weakening the pickup and breaking off. I end up having it rebalanced by another shop, engine smooth as silk now. Pickup problem went away.
I know I said two stories. But the shop I had the assembly rebalanced, I started using because they did a good job on the balance. So I brought a set of rare aluminum corvette heads that were nicely ported, to have decked. They end up making a .250 cut halfway into the first combustion chamber before they noticed they were cutting too much. Smh. Offered to buy me a new head but I was on my own with the portwork. So they ending up having the head welded, decked and I fixed the combustion chamber.

So..... this is why I don’t like to farm my stuff out. I have one guy I trust for valve jobs and seat replacement (I do my own guides and have him do the valve job) but that’s about all he can do.