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GSR + short skirt strutted pistons = dead after 3k miles After about 3000 miles, I started hearing noises from the block that sounded like a loose or dead wrist pin. I took apart the head just to make sure there wasn't something wrong in the valvetrain, and also pulled the oil pan to see if anything on the bottom end was messed up. I couldn't see anything- but as you will see from the pictures, it's very difficult to see the damage to the sleeve if you're looking straight down the bore. I was lying under the car at night with just a shop light to help me see, so I didn't see any of the scoring on the sleeve walls. The girdle and bearing caps blocking my view probably didn't help too much either. I don't really want to speculate, but I'm 99% sure that the block ended up this way because of the short skirts on these pistons. The pistons are awesome- they made 152 lbft of torque in a 2020cc B block with no mods to the head, but I guess they just aren't streetable. The assumption here is that the short skirts on the pistons allowed them to rock around in the bore too much, causing the pistons to score the sleeve. The skirts are a few millimeters shorter than stock pistons, and I guess a few millimeters makes a ton of difference. Well, take a look- these pistons rock, but I won't try to run them on a daily driver again. General block pictures:    Cylinder 1 pictures:  Down the bore:  From the front of the block:  From the back of the block:  Piston damage:  Piston damage, other side:  Cylinder 2 pictures:  Down the bore:  From the front of the block:  From the back of the block:  Piston damage:  Piston damage, other side:  Cylinder 3 pictures:  Down the bore:  From the front of the block:  From the back of the block:  Piston damage:  Piston damage, other side:  Cylinder 4 pictures:  Down the bore:  From the front of the block:  From the back of the block:  Piston damage:  Piston damage, other side:  Last update: 2003-12-18 |