legacycentral bbs

I am currently resurrecting a 1994 SS wagon, and I very much need new pistons, as there is a rather large hole where there ought to be rings on the #4 piston, and a crack in the #2. I don't want to bore it out, because there is no need to, and I don't want to pay another couple hundred dollars for the boring. I would happily get Wiseco pistons, but I can't seem to find them in standard size. What company/brand would you recommend, and how much do they charge?

I have found one or two companies that (maybe) make these pistons, but I would like to find something that people have actually had experience with.

Also, does anyone have a recommendation for a gasket set and/or bearings?

I have done a search or two, but haven't found much of use, though I could have missed something. Feel free to yell at me if that is the case... Thanks in advance for your help.

Yeah I don't think you can get brand new OEM pistons any more, so having a company like CP make yousome might be the only option, for stock size. One thing though, several of my bblocks had "out of round" cylinder walls and my machine shop said they highly recommended getting them bored to correct that. They looked fine to the naked eye...

For gaskets I recommend OEM, for bearings I haven't had a problem with ACL race bearings.

Thanks for the input. My block is at the machine shop right now to be cleaned, resurfaced, and honed, so they will let me know if it needs to be bored as well. When I took it in they seemed to think it would be fine... Any idea how much a company like that would charge for a set? Because if it is much more than a set of Wisecos, then I might as well just bite the bullet and get it bored...

Good to know. I was planning on ACL if I didn't get any other recommendations.

At one point I did buy new OEM pistons from Crawford. They would buy the ej22t blocks and wouldn't use the pistons. So you could ask them if they have any remaining.

The other issue though, even with a light hone, you'll be increasing the clearances in the cylinder so a std size piston will likely have a larger clearance than spec'd. Will it still work, yes....that's what I did the first go around. My opinion though is if you've got the block in there for machining, might as well have them do the cylinders and get .01 or .02 oversized pistons.

However, I will warn you that most machine shops need the pistons prior to doing the cylinder machining. So you should decide what you want to do before they hone the block. They should be able to take measurements before actually doing anything though.

Thank you for responding.

With the advice I have received here, the difficulty of finding standard size pistons, and the possibility that my crank is bad enough to need machine work (they haven't measured it yet), I am thinking I will probably go ahead and get it bored and buy Wiseco pistons. And since I can probably get a ej25 crank and rods cheaper than having mine machined, I will probably go ahead and throw all that in there while I am at it.

I will certainly get the pistons before I have any boring done, but thanks for the warning anyway.

An option my machine shop has mentioned, but we never proceeded on, was to hone the cylinders back to round and then have the skirts on the pistons coated a few thousandths to match. It sounded good on paper and there are many coatings that are beneficial.....

I ended up ordering custom pistons and a normal bore and hone.

Interesting... I'll keep that in mind. Where did you get your pistons, and how much did they cost?

yeah, coating forged pistons on the newer Leggys and WRXs is good to make up for any gap dimension that is too large, as well as to help with the piston slap sound that the forged pistons seem to lead to.

Out-of-round and taper seem to be the problem with high mileage EJs, maybe the turbo's beat up on the cylinders a lot more - makes sense.

FYI Wiseco makes custom pistons - there is a form to fill out, very detailed. Your machine shop should do whatever work is necessary and advise on the exact dimensions that they come up with, but yeah, machine shops sometimes want the pistons in hand so they know exactly what they are working with, and they massage to get it right from there..

ACL bearings are great.

BTW, the ej25 crank won't work without addressing the difference in thrust bearing. The ej22 and ej22t cranks are identical, so you should be able to find a decent non-turbo ej22 crank to use instead.

Ah... somehow I overlooked that issue when researching. Thanks for bringing it to my attention before I went and did something stupid (expensive).

anyone know the stock ej22t piston size? 97.0mm?? 2212cc?

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-view-image.html? ... Flag=false

i think i got my respond wont work on a turbo 1992 i guess

http://www.angelfire.com/md3/91turboleg ... round.html