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Post for a friend who is currently unable to post.

His car is a 56 Caribbean, The original motor was completely rebuilt about 15 years (15,000 miles) ago. last summer it developed an ominous knock.

On teardown there was a lot of carbon present. When the pistons (egge's) were removed, two had cracks (correction: the cracks are in the skirts).

The rebuilder is a Packard specialist.

Any thoughts you would care to share will be useful in moving ahead. The carbon bothers him because there was so much more than was anticipated.

Carbon deposits: leaking fuel (overrich) due to lots of potential problems, all carb related. Solution: get someone competent and experienced with 4GCs to overhaul them.

Would like to see a pic of split in skirt.

Good point. Will see if they have anything or could take a snap or two....

I don't want to start a controversy so will just say, this isn't the first time I have heard of Egge pistons breaking. You are lucky you got 10 years and 15000 miles out of them, lots of people don't. And you are lucky they did not damage the engine.

I thought egge was the only game in town for our cars, short of finding a set of new PMC pistons, which seems unlikely....

Aren't custom made pistons prohibitively expensive? Who else is there?

EDIT: Here is what I found; not sure they help but it's a start....

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Jack vines.... And deposits look like a crap carb to me. But I know little

Thousands and thousands of collector cars are happily running on Egge pistons; those few problems I've heard of are related to folks incorrectly applying piston clearance recommendations for OEM autothermic strut type and not the clearance recommendations provided for cast pistons like Egge. They did have a bout of issues perhaps 10 or 12 years ago with wrist pin bores not square with the piston but I haven't heard of that in more than a decade.

Is an Egge the type of piston you'd want for a high performance rebuild? No, but properly fitted they should be just fine for the type of driving we do with our collector cars.

I got this email from Ross pistons a few weeks ago:

Hi,

We can custom manufacture forged pistons for your 1956 packard 374 Ci engine. It will take 3 weeks to manufacture the pistons. Please let me know if you would like to place this custom piston order.



The cost is:

Pistons $799.92
Pins $98.00
Rings $147.08



Estimated total less freight $1045



Thanks,

Chris

Chris Laduca

Automotive Piston Sales

claduca@rosspistons.com

Phone: (310) 536-0100 EXT. 20

Fax: (310) 536-0333

Or, if you want to go with Egge again, I have a set of new .030 Egges on ebay right now. I decided to go with forged.