Owen_Dyneto wrote:
Quote:
We V8 owners really missed an opportunity on pistons a few years back. Some of you will recall the Kanter offered to have exact repro of factory autothermic strut design pistons manufactured for the 352 and 374 engines in std. and oversizes and only asked for a reasonable number of expressions of interest in them - I believe only 2 people expressed an interest so the project was abandoned.
Not the first time you've brought that point up, so I'll remind again that owners aren't gonna buy pistons for an engine until an overhaul is necessary and that it's impossible to say which, if any, oversize, they would need until such time.
When I first got into the dealership parts biz some 30+ years ago, we never stocked pistons on the shelf, but only special-ordered them from the factory warehouse when needed (which was not very often). I'm not aware of any parts stores that actually stock pistons, locally, for passenger car motors, but they also only order them from their warehouse system, when needed.
When the factory and retail aftermarket fall short, a vendor in the hobby segment needs to shoulder the burden of providing quality replacement parts. Otherwise, interest in restoring the cars will only suffers, and the level of butchering will grow.
Yet, Kanter's offer seems to have become a moot point when it was later announced, in
this post, that
Egge came out with "steel strutted" pistons for the 352 and 374 engines. Further discussion revealed that they were available in standard, .020, .030, .040 and .060 oversize. However, I'm still waiting to hear of anyone's experience with these pistons.
Meanwhile, there's a reason why Packard engineers went with autothermic pistons rather than cast in the V8s. So why should anyone settle for less than OE design/quality in restoration?
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