A FWIW about pistons

[bruce]

I had been running a junkyard 85 3.8 in my car as a mule engine for a few years. Eventually I was able to kill it thur sustained 20+ PSI boost levels. In running some experimential code there were a few times where I really may have hurt it, but being a mule engine I just wasn't worried about it. I got well over 30K miles on it, and it was well used when I dropped it in.

Got a call from the machine shop, letting me know that #4 that was torched was the only problem.. And that the pistons were some cheat cast econo rebuilder's specials.

While I did manage to blow a set of headgaskets when I had the 40 PPH injectors in it, and it ate an econo roller cam, I'd say tuned right even cast pistons can be remarkably reliable.

The Death of #4 was from an injector problem. If the injector hadn't gone flakey it would still be in the car. The injector problem was two fold. It turned out the injector was intermittently sticking open, and the harness was intermittently opening. So #4 was way too rich or way too lean for awhile before I was able to resolve the two issues.

I can't tell ya, how hard I did beat on that engine, and once I got to having enough injector, didn't hurt it at all running high boost on pump gas with a proper tune.

 

[T-top87GN]

Interesting read Bruce.

I think alot of things on these cars can last a good while with the correct tune. Most of our cars can pass emissions sans catalytic if the car is tuned up and running a modest program.