I have a chevy 350 engine that I am rebuilding. As far as pistons go I just want to change the rings but not rebore the engine. So, I was thinking about using a flexhone bore tool to roughen up the bores and then buy new rings. However, the engine is from 1979 truck and I am not sure If I should use standard rings or If I should use .30 rings to make sure the rings seal well. Also, I need a full set of bolts for my engine. All I got are the head bolts, piston bolts, and bolts for the 4 bolt main caps. Does anyone know where I can fing I set for sale?

 

The only proper way to do it is check it out with a dial bore gauge, simply "roughing up" the bores will most likely not give you the proper surface to have proper ring seal. Most machine shops will bore a engine for approx 30-40$ a hole and a set of KB hyperuetectic pistons wont run you much more than 200$ and you cannot use 0.030 rings on a standard bore, you will have no ring endgap and is the wrong way to get out of not boring a engine.

 

You could file the +.030 rings to the proper gap spec for each cylinder, (and you can get smaller oversizes) but you are still going have out of round, tapered bore walls that the rings will not seal and will eventually break from the flex.

Also the pistons will not fit correctly, they will slap and rattle around and eventually fracture the skirts off.

Do it right.


All bolts can be bought from ARP.