5.0L internal questions...

[Blacksheep Josh]

1. Anybody used or have an opinion on Speed Pro Hyper pistons? I'm staying n/a and from what I've seen they can be used with great success on n/a setups. Just wondering if any members here have used the brand. I believe Fel-Pro makes them?

2. My research into the connecting rods have yielded a few people saying that the stock rods are forged? Which is good news! Can someone verify this?

3. Final question, Anyone have any tricks for letting loose any more hp? I'm going to have the crankshaft balanced, along with the flexplate and a lighter weight crankshaft pulley if I can find one. I'm also looking at having the connecting rods balanced/lightened if possible. This is a very long term project (at least the engine build) and if there's anything I can have done now, I'm going to.

 

[boominXplorer]

If your doing all that why not a stroker setup? You can get a nice crank / rods / pistions setup for under $2k.

If you just want to keep it cheap keep the block stock. Throw some new bearings in it, freshen the heads up and go. The stock pistons and rings are good for well over 300k if the motor has been any whatsoever taken care of. Bearing wear to bronze becomes apparent around 175-200k mi usually.

If you need to bore it then figure out what size pistons you actually need and go from there. In the end machine shop time is money, might as well get some goodies in there while you can and it just depends on how deep your wallet is.

 

[rjcooperss396]

Speed Pro hypereutectic pistons will work fine in a N/A build. One advantage to a hypereutectic piston is that they don't expand as much as a forged piston so you can run a tight piston-to-wall clearance. A disadvantage is that they don't like detonation. I broke two sets within 800 miles both times with a supercharged 302 that put down 470rwhp.

As for the rods, I don't know if they are forged or not but the stock rods are plenty strong. I used the stock rods and cast crank in that supercharged 302 I had in my Cobra only I ran Probe forged pistons after I broke the hypereutectic sets. The engine had over 90,000 miles on it before I built the 347 in it now.

With trying to lighten the rods and balancing the crank for it, you're not going to gain anything and will just be wasting money. Unless you plan to build the engine to spin up to 7,000 to 8,000 RPM.

 

[Blacksheep Josh]

Cool cool, I like what I hear. I've been doing a little bit of searching here and there and seeing some videos about connecting rod and balancing and such. If it's not worth anything in the 0-7k rpm range then I'll keep them as is.

Probably the only reason I'm not going stroker on this is for the simple reason this is my first V8 build. I built a motor for a Nissan 240sx last year, this will be my first V8 build of any kind. Trying to stay within a "stock set" as I call it, but with a few power adders here and there.

The motor I'm building is kinda unknown mileage. Everything looks almost perfect so far but I'd rather rebuild/slightly build it now while it's out of the vehicle then regret not doing something. Check out my build thread and you'll kinda see the direction I'm going!