anyone have a favorite piston brand when it comes to boost? i in the process of tearing down my complete 350 i got (it has four bolt mains i found out :D ). my plan is to throw on some vortec heads and a smallish nitrous cam with some either forged or hypereutectic pistons and spray the snot out of it. so anyone got a favorite company? and which would you go with forged or hypereutectic? TIA
-Jay

Forged, without doubt. They are much, much more forgiving of a lean run.

I second for the forged. I like JE pistons but there are many good companies.

personally,i like the wiseco pro-tru forged pistons.grat value for your hard-earned cash! graemlins/thumbsup.gif

If you are going to "spray the snot out of it," then I've been told you'll want to go with forged, and not to even consider the hyper pistons, as those won't take kindly to the abuse. They are strong, but brittle, so if you over-squeeze they'll shatter.

This is all second-hand info from this board. However, I know all blower pistons are forged, so I'd assume placing similar high pressure loads on an engine with nitrous would require similar hard parts.

Definitely forged. I had a 383 in a 92 vette that was built for the bottle. I had great luck with a set of budget minded, forged, Probe thick crown pistons. I made 475 RWHP and 620 RWTQ with only a 100 shot of juice. After about 10,000 miles I sold the car to a guy who tore the engine down. The pistons still looked great.

You might want to consider adding a little ring gap as well. That'll allow the rings to expand a bit due to the extra heat associated with nitrous use.

Any forged nitrous piston will work fine. I like JE or Venolia.

Your thoughts on "Spraying the snot out of it." requires you to build the motor from the ground up to handle large amounts of nitrous, including head and probably bottom end studs, O-ringed block or heads with copper head gaskets, a good fuel system that will handle what you need without ever hicuping, ring gap of .007 per thou of bore diameter, some knowlede of NOS to fuel ratios, an ignition system that will not let you down, very high quality race gas, etc. If you want to run up to about a 200 shot in a small block there is a lot more room for error, however as the shots get up to the 250-400 range the rules change.

I will use CP next time - heard they are very good. If you tell them "big nitrous" they will leave a crown of about .300". If you are going to spray it to death go .007" gap per inch of bore 1st and 2nd.

Ryan thanks for clearing that up, that is what I meant .007 per in. of bore diameter. Sorry for the typo. make sure you use a ring that is designed for nitrous, Hellfires are very good.