Hi

I'm trying to have my engine prepared for assembly but I think the shop is trying to cheat me big time. It is actually by far cheaper for me to get new connecting rods from the states than having the old ones transfered to the new pistons...

So my question is this, if I buy new ones, will I be able to install them in the pistons myself? If not, part of the cost from the shop would still be posing a problem.

 

Short answer- No.






UNLESS they've got a floating wrist pin.

 

You've already lost me... a what?

 

piston pins are either press or floating

floating use clips/locks in the pistons to hold the pin in

pressed in are exactly that, the pin is pressed into the piston usually with heat and shop press

don't try to press them in yourself, thats better off left to the machine shop

 

Yea, I remember telling you I had the same thing right? Reconditioning my rods with ARP bolts was going to cost $90 for the bolts, and $120 to resize them. So I paid roughly the same for barebones ones from ohio crank shaft. The $159 ones, they come with ARP bolts.

You can do the pressfit ones yourself, at least if you screw up, you can still bring it to the machine shop to finish off for you. Not like you'll have ruined/destroyed them, you just have to walk into the shop with your tail between your legs and a bit less pride. Pride is cheap.
Drop the pins into the freezer and put the pistons and rods in a nice warm place. Out in the sun, basin of warm water, etc. Then after the pins were in the freezer for 24hrs, just push them into the pistons and rods with your fingers. They should start to get hard to press in about halfway, so make it quick. You want it to stick out one side about 1/8" or so. I heard about this trick in Vizards book that i've been quoting a lot, i'll dig it up to see if I missed anything in it, later this afternoon - i'm just walking out the door here. I had the machine shop do it for me, free with the pistons, so I didn't bother.

Lets see, I paid;

$180 bore/hone
$120 deck
$120 polish crank
$200 to buy pistons
$90 to buy basic moly coated iron rings
I ended up paying over $2k, but that included $400 or so for my head work... I'll dig up my bill when I get home, $2k sounds right, BUT, not for just a bore/hone, deck and polish crank. Did he specify prices for each of those jobs seperately? I'm curious what's jacking up the prices.

 

Yes he did. Bore is like 570$
Hone: 190$
Decking: 200$
Getting rods from pistons: 180$
Getting new pistons on rods: 245$
Polish crank: 290$
Makes a total of 1675$ And that's just the main points... there also some cleaning and stuff involved... Doing the whole thing on the engine would have cost 5400$.

Keep in mind these are Swiss labor prices but still... What does that excuse when I can get a new block for 600 bucks and a new crankshaft for 180?

Now that you told me it is possible to do the rods myself I'd say I can get quite some material for those 1675$. Only sad thing is I had the heads and the block checked and that'll cost me anyway but that can't be changed now... How do you Americans say? No sense in crying over spillt milk.

 

Those prices are flat out ridiculous. I'm not sure what the exchange rate is there or anything, but what kind of hourly rate do you think they charge? I mean, typical machine shop rate is $80-100/hr here. I highly doubt it'd take him almost an entire day to simple bore the cylinders. Unless it's like peso's there, and the money has a very low value, so the number is large. But you seem to be choking on those prices, so i'm guessing that's not the case..

If he's not set up to do SBC stuff, so he has to make some tooling in order to do it, maybe... But geez, that's crazy.

What do you mean by;
Are you re-using the old rods, and that 180 is to seperate your old rods and pistons, then $245 to put the new pistons on the old rods? That's just outrageous...

Have you purchased the rotating assembly yet? ie, pistons? For $290 to refinish your crank, and with the rod/piston prices, i'd look at a complete rotating assembly. You can probably get something from Ohio crankshaft, or another machine shop type of place, and even get them to press the pistons and rods together for you.

 

Yes, I have the pistons but since they came with the set from Northernautoparts.com that's not that big of a deal. They weren't that expensive and since they are new they should be resellable on ebay. Question is just whether it will be ebay.com or ebay.de.

I have contacted Northern, because their service was excellent compared to Summit (they didn't even want to give me a shipping quote before I placed the order...), whether they can sell me a block, crank, rods and pistons right away. Let's see what they say.
Anyway, if they don't have engine blocks, I saw a standard 350 on jegs.com for 600 something. Since this is not a racing application that should do nicely. Question is just this: I bought an engine kit matched to a 69 block. If I bought a newer model I'd have to make sure I have fitting parts.

As to labour... my mechanic takes like 80 Swiss Franks per hour. That's like 64$. But this isn't MY mechanic but a professional engine shop (they have done Chevys among English engines of all kinds). I'd say their prices will be somewhere in the 120$ price range. Or higher. If you want something to compare monetary value with, a Big King with small fries and half a litre of Coke costs almost 9$ here. About any fast food menu costs around 9$, so there ya go.

And yes I am actually talking about them separating the old rods from the pistons to be reused. Which is out of the question now .

 

What engine kit did you buy? If you're thinking of buying a shortblock from jegs, (block, rods, pistons, crank), what is in the kit that you'd still need to use? The SBC hasn't really changed from 1969, assuming you're not getting a 1pc RMS, then everything from the kit (i'm assuming a gasket kit?) would work fine.
That jegs engine would probably be good, but you'd want to know what pistons are in it. I forget what cylinder heads you were going to use, but that engine would probably have 12cc dish pistons sorta thing, such that 60ishcc heads would be needed to keep the CR up to a decent level.

Yea, i've heard things in Switzerland cost more. My buddy spent a year there on his internship at Alstom Power, he took a train into Germany to go grocery shopping. Seemed weird to me, but whatever.
haha, do you ever ask for "a litre of cola" there? heheh...

Even when they charge high hourly rates, that's still a high price. It shouldn't take more than 1-2hrs to bore and hone the block. Pressing pistons/rods together takes maybe 1/2hr with a big hydraulic press, so those rates are just flat out extortion... Or we're both missing some tidbit of info somehow...

 

Well I usally order half a litre. We're doing things metric here, remember . And since we're not German we get the tx refnded on top of Germany having lower prices... one might argue also lower quality but that's both debatable and depending on how well you compare different shops... as it is always and everywhere. Remember you can drive through this country in like six hours. This is not the states where the border is a 48 hour drive away .


Well I was thinking about a bare block. Question is just do I order one overbored already or do I try to get rid of the pistons and order stadard sized ones?

The parts I bough was about everything beside block, crank, heads (they'll be next. AFR heads) and connecting rods. So new seals, new bolts, pumps, cam, lifters, timing chain and so on and so forth. Well, you've helped me put the list together but I don't assume you'd remember that .

I'm interested to know how heavy those parts are and what BAX charges to ship them overseas.

 

Never tried it with pressed-in wrist pins, but pure acetone and dry ice gets things COLD. If you really want to shrink something, thats the way to go.

 

Dude you got raped, My machinest only charged me 60 bucks to install pistons on the rods.

 

haha, yea, Canada's even bigger than USA The stretch of the globe makes it look smaller, tha's all
The "litre of cola" was a reference to a movie called "super troopers". An american cop is buying a "litre of cola" at a burger place and the 16yr old kid working there has no idea what he's talking about. Funny stuff.

What pistons do you have now? cast, hyper, forged? I think it's a PITA to sell car parts, but if you call up northern, see if you can sweet talk them into just returning them and getting another size. If you bought .030" over, those are a really common size, they'd have no trouble restocking and selling them. Especially since you'll be ordering the standard size from them., and are a pretty good customer right? They might ding you a 10% restocking/shipping fee or something, but it's still probably a lot easier than trying to sell those pistons again.

Either way, you can either buy a virgin, newly cast 350 block, or buy a "reconditioned" block. You can probably find a reconditioned shortblock on Ebay, .030" overbored, with freeze plugs, cam bearings, and painted, for a good price. Or some other type of seller. It's a really common thing to buy, so much so that most people would just buy it locally, but since that's not easy for you... That would mean you're ok keeping your pistons now. But I think you usually need to have the block finish honed to the exact pistons in hand.

Someone else can confirm/deny that, but that's what my machinist made me do.

Maybe call up Northern and see what they suggest. Tell them what you've got, and if they recommend you return the .030" pistons and buy a new block, or try to buy a used, bored out block and keep your pistons? Not sure if they have machine shop capabilities, or if they'd have any used, machined blocks for sale there.
While you're on the phone with them, see what a basic cast crank and entry level aftermarket rods cost. Also price it out on ohio crank shaft. They were the best deal I had found before.

Oh, side thought, if you return your pistons, and buy everything from one place, you might be able to get them to press the pistons onto the rods for you...

And yea, have a few drinks before you ask for a shipping quote on a block, it'll help numb the pain. :O