Choosing piston brand and other internal engine components

[supra90mkiii]

I recently purchased a spare 7mgte block and head with the plans of building it up to handle 500+hp. I am currently running around in a rebuilt 7m, but I had built it when I was 17, and wish I had done things a little differently. (Didn't do anything aftermarket with the head in terms of performance, just a factory rebuild. Also used Ross pistons which I found out, a couple weeks after finishing the build, about the horrible sounding piston slap issue.) So these are a couple of the things I want to do differently.

The engine I found had, if I remember correctly, had 163k miles on it, but was unmolested internally. Only issue it had was the crank pulley started to wobble off and rounded out the key way on the end of the crank. Right now I'm having my machine shop fix the messed up keyway hole. Internally the motor doesn't look like it has 160k+miles on it, all the bearings look good, no scoring or bad wear, cylinder walls all look good, again no scoring or abnormal wear. This is going to be a slow build, I want to make sure I do things correctly, and don't cut corners.

I'm trying to figure out what brand of pistons to go with, I've recently heard of Probe pistons, and people seem to like those. Are people having luck with these? When compared to JE or CP pistons, how do they differ?

I'm also planning on going with Eagle rods. I know I remember seeing a thread a long time ago about replacing the rod bolts that come with Eagle rods. Is that still an issue???

So far with the head I've had it ported and polished, comp cam valve springs, and a 3-angle valve job done on it. I also have a set of BC stage 2 cams (264s) in my current motor that will be transferred over to this head. Along with a set of AEM adjustable cam gears.

When the keyway problem is fixed, I'll bring my block over to the machinist so they can polish the crank bearing surfaces and what not. Is there a particular brand of bearing that stands out from the rest? clevite? factory?



Thanks for reading my story guys, I've been off the boards for quite a while and I'm trying to catch up on things.

 

[Rennat]

Probes are basically a high performance pistons without the name... go compare the probe pistons specs and pictures to the pistons that titan has specially made for them, and you'll be suprised that they look identical... the probes even have the "detonation grooves" in the top part of the upper ring land.

the eagle rod issue is a thing of the past. dont worry about it.

everybody seems to like clevite's... titanmotorsports has some good pricing.

 

[supra90mkiii]

Thanks for the reply and info! much appreciated.

 

[Doward]

Eagles + Probe pistons here. I've no reservations about pushing 650rwhp daily through it (once the car is complete, anyway, lol)

 

[supra90mkiii]

Cool thanks.

 

[sneakypete]

im running cp's and eagles (eagles now come with arp hardware) here... with clevite bearings. the pistons are a bit heavier than most, but i like the piece of mind that im running bulky pistons. i did notice some piston slap this winter... but i expected that due to the different rate of expansion of the metals. just had to let it warm up a bit before driving.
-pete