Anyone have a favorite brand of forged piston or good/bad experience with a certain brand?Was considering speedpro,but found out those have been imported junk for a while...Starting to look over wiseco-those are still properly made in the USA Keith Black decent? J.E.?

 

What are you building and how much are you going to spend??.KB certainly isn't in the same class as a Wiseco.

 

I've always used JE pistons. Their Sportsman line (SRP) are good for a street engine but not as light as the race pistons. Probe pistons are a good bang for the buck. I would have used them except they didn't have an exact piston for what I was building and JE did.

"Made in USA" means nothing in todays market. You can get good quality and crap from anywhere.

 

Probe are my favorite, but I like JE and Mahle if price wasn't a factor as well. Probe's pistons are fantastic for the money. I have their pistons in my 355 and I had a 408 stroker kit from them.. exceptional quality to say the very least.

 

I used je and srp so far with success. There are quite a few brands. Mahle is ok for na builds most of the time but the alloy isnt recommended for power adders. Diamond makes good pistons. CP makes good pistons. Wiseco is good too. Probe i have also heard good things about

What you use will depend on the application for certain

 

The thing that intrigued me in this question is much to the O/P's credit he didn't start out asking about the cheapest thing out there. Three thumbs up to him.

 

Acouple of things I wanted to add to this.Really good race pistons come in a set of 10 all balanced the same.That way if you need to swap out one it's no problem.They are normally full floaters for the same reason where floaters don't really add anything to the output of the engine and press fit are fine for street use.

 

I read a story about a big name engine builder that used Ross NOS pistons in a build for the engine masters challange and found they made a bit more power than the lighter pistons he normally uses.
Y? turns out they are more stable and have a better ring seal than the light pistons.
The motor was a mild 403 sbc that made 680ish HP.

I've always been a lighter is better guy but that got me thinking and researching a bit.

 

It's of course not all piston dependent.The block prep plays a big role in that as well.A example of lighter being better is the titanium rod engine is certainly going to rev faster and produce a greater output.

But then the other parts become more critical.A light wt knife edge crank is also has to be used as a example.

 

Diamond, CP, Wiseco, They all make alot of really nice pistons. Custom stuff, Diamond or CP is the only way we go. The KB Icon series is also putting out alot of very nice stuff aswell. We ave ran pretty much all of them.

 

Nothing too exotic will be needed-application will be a mild street meant for up to 5500 rpm usage,~250-275 FWHP Situation is i installed a used '84 corvette "L83"in my z28 back in 1994,modifying the intake and heads a little for more power.Any way have added about 140,000 miles to the engine on top of what it had when i got it-still going strong,but showing it's age here and there(needs stem seals,pan gasket repair,ETC.)checked my spare engine(350 from '83 inpala cop car,only 89,000 mi)and it is in almost pristine shape except 3 cyls.sat with rain water in them and there are some rust pits in those bores-thinking about building this into basicly an enhanced duplicate of the forged piston vette engine(don't really need forged,but would be better/cooler that way)After i posted,discovered i had a dusty old box of brand new NP 345 cast pistons i bought at a swap meet about 15 yrs ago,considering using these as i have them and they are spoken well of for cast pistons.Then poking for info online,heard they sit .020 down in the hole compaired to original flattops-confirmed this by checking an original '70 350 flattop...Would have to deck the block if i decided to use these NP345 cast pistons.

 

If its just a mild rebuild i would skip forged pistons. Else use srp or equivalent as they are cheaper out of forged variety. Mahle may be good price wise too.

 

"Re-builder" pistons definitely have a different pin height than the aftermarket.I suggest you go for reverse dome "D" pistons setting the deck so you end up with a .040 quench/squish.That promotes flame travel even with today's pump gas.You can get them in a cast version piston with normal ring sizes and do get press fit pins for the street.

 

Digging for info on the NP345 pistons,did find discussion on the quench clearance issues with these down in the hole .020 or more-was said clearance over .050 could promote detonation.Reverse dome"D" pistons does look like a good plan -also about the only way to get over about 9:1 CR if i use the 76cc heads on the cop engine('vette has the same) would like to get ~9-9.5 CR.

 

CP

 

BRC and Lunati both are good Pistons. I use both to this day without any problems.