Restoring a Legend, Building a LS3 For Falken’s Championship Winning S13 – Part Two

Once the rod position and bearing sizes have been determined, it is time to hang the rods on the forged JE FSR Pistons.  For long life and free ring movement, the ring groove area and the pin bosses have been WPC treated.  The piston pins have also been WPC treated.

Howard first installs one of the piston pin retaining clips so our 6.125″ Eagle rods can be installed. We are running longer rods to reduce some of the piston speed we are gaining due to the longer stroke.  Longer rods reduce some of the mechanical stress on the bottom end and with easier acceleration away from TDC, give the cylinders more time to fill and gives the combustion more time to impinge on the piston dome.  This helps power as well as increases reliability to a small degree.  You can actually hear and feel a smoothness difference in longer rod engines over their shorter rod counterparts all other things being equal.

Howard spirals the pieces of the oil ring, the scraper rails and separator, in place using a small punch to stagger the scraper’s end gaps.

Next Howard puts the compression rings in place and staggers the end gaps as well.  Since JE’s Perfect Skirt coating would be damaged by WPC treatment, we had the coated areas masked off when the pistons were WPC’ed.

The pistons and rods are ready to go.  The assemblies are numbered so the right combination of bearings to rod journals and bores to piston rings all go in the right cylinders.

5 comments

  1. I don’t have much in the way of comments but I’m really interested to see how this turns out – from the parts selection and goals, this looks like a really really useful build spec for a lot of purposes.

    With the relatively big cam (I certainly like the idea Comp has there, if it works as expected) but highish compression, what are you anticipating for octane requirements, or are you just accepting as a given it’ll be E85/race gas fed?

    1. I think this engine will be great for drift, road race, and any long-duration type use. It will need something like E85 or a race fuel like VP110.

      1. I was thinking that with the compression tuned down a bit (or just fed E85) it might make a really fun “hot street” combination as well, at least for those of us with tolerance for some compromises on drivability.

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