I took my short to a machine shop to get it looked at after I spun a bearing. The owner freaked out and told me that my pistons were in backwards. He said the piston reliefs were incorrect. The motor was by Lingenfelter. Can you guys tell me if the valve reliefs are supposed to be on the top or the bottom of the piston...

 

Top, like towards the lifter valley. Also, the offset pin needs to be towards the opposite direction the engine rotates.

 

Like this:

 

well how were they in.If they were incorrect then i would like to meet the guy that put it together

 

And if they were in correctly, you might want to find a different machine shop.

 

Pics or it didnt happen!!!

Seriously, Id love to see some proof of this. Ive seen pics of this happening before but it was from a no name shop doing the assembly.

 

Ok, just spoke with Tim from LPE (Lingenfelter Performance Engineering). I gave him the run down on my situation. Come to find out the parts used in my short block were in dead supplied by LPE, but the motor was assembled by another shop. I want to thank Tim and all of the guys from LPE for all of there patience and help with this. I'm having a machine shop look at fixing my "spun bearing" issue. And I want to thank you guys here on the board for all of your help as well... I knew I could count on you guys...
I'm getting some pics for you guys right now. The cam is small enough to where I wouldn't have any clearance issues. As for the machine shop it's at now. they are one of the best around. Between his word and the guys from LPE, my pistons are in backwards... The valve reliefs are at the bottom of the pistons..

 

No ****.....lol wow

 

Maybe they build a lot of 3V mod motors...

 

Wow! Makes me wonder sometimes.....

 

Wow is all I can say

 

Wow...

 

I'm no engine builder, but this seems like a very "common sense" type of thing. All 8 pistons were like that?

 

So much for the relief needing to be at the top(at least with this cam) and the piston pin offset being properly indexed. How long did the engine run like this? Are you blaming the spun bearing on this?

 

Ooofff... now that very interesting... so to speak. Glad there wasn't any question of PtV clearance. If I was LPE and this shop assembled this block for me (for my customers) I would start collecting information on what they have done and where it has gone and maybe try to get my hands on a few local samples to do some investigating. *shrug*

 

I've seen over 9 different engines like this from different shops and 2 home built deals. It doesn't surprise me at all. I always take and keep the pics in case they try to deny it later.

We just got through freshening up two different deals with bearings in the rods backwards and one was from a big name race shop here in Houston and had no oil support rails as well.

It's not as rare as you think unfortunately.

 

that is insane....

 

id be more concerned with all the chunks missing out of the number 7 piston. looks like u had something bouncing around in there that wasnt supposed to be.

 

So, did you really spin a bearing?

 

People have Pm'd me about the shop I was referring to and it is not a regular LS1 shop featured on LS1tech. It is however a shop that employs personnel that previously built race engines and the like for the last 20 years though supposedly.

You just have to be careful. Sometimes you aren't always getting what you paid for. You can SEE that the pistons are in upside down but you can't SEE bad machining or when a shop doesn't really "blueprint" an engine that you paid them to do.

On this engine I would want to know what KCS is asking too about which and how many bearings let go. You can see one of the pistons was coming close to hitting the head as well at TDC but it wasn't hitting hard at least from the pictures. Of course that piston might be one with a spun bearing too?