I will be rebuilding my motor in the near future and was wondering what people prefer or have had expirience with. The OEM pistons cost a lot more but i trust them. I have never used the Nippons. The rebuild is basically a stock ITR motor and i would like it to last a long long long time. I will not be exceeding the stock ITR rev limit and would like to get 100,000 miles out of it.

Are Nippong Pistons just as reliable?

 

i read that for the price they are good pistons and raise your comp from stock very well but not sure if they are reliable.

 

Well, I originally intended to have the machine shop bore my block to 81.25mm and run the OEM oversize piston. The machine shop screwed up and went too big. Now my piston to wall clearance is at the Service Limit of 0.05mm (0.002in) with oversize pistons. That is too much clearance for me and now my options are to either have it rebored to 81.5mm and make sure they dont go too far or to make them buy me a new block.

I am pretty pissed off about the whole situation. I really wanted to do a 100% OEM rebuild on this.

 

Obviously not a high-performance build if .002 is too much.

 

make sure they have the pistons before they bore.

 

The walls were scratched from a previous setup where i cracked the ringlands. I didnt know if 81.25mm would be enough to clean it up so i didnt want to order pistons until i knew they would work.

They told me they would just do a rough bore to see if it would clean up and then i would order the pistons so they could have them for the final hone. When they called me today they said it was ready for pickup. Then i asked about the hone and they said it was already done. This shop was recommended by many people i trust. I am going to measure the block at work tomorrow and if it exceeds the service limit i will be asking for a refund and the cost of the block.

That leads to my next question....What is a B18C5 block worth these days?

 

Send it to a different machine shop. They should have the pistons in hand when they do the work, ask them which size pistons you should order. Each piston should be matched to a specific cylinder... not one size fits all unless you're using CP pistons.

I chose RS Machine 81.5 ITR copies. Was pleasantly surprised by the quality, came with new wrist pins and Arias rings.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by b18bEKcoupe &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The walls were scratched from a previous setup where i cracked the ringlands. I didnt know if 81.25mm would be enough to clean it up so i didnt want to order pistons until i knew they would work.

They told me they would just do a rough bore to see if it would clean up and then i would order the pistons so they could have them for the final hone. When they called me today they said it was ready for pickup. Then i asked about the hone and they said it was already done. This shop was recommended by many people i trust. I am going to measure the block at work tomorrow and if it exceeds the service limit i will be asking for a refund and the cost of the block.

That leads to my next question....What is a B18C5 block worth these days?</TD></TR></TABLE>

You'll be lucky if they buy you a new block. You have a better chance of them fixing it to 81.5 than them buying a new block.

 

Finally had a chance to talk with them. They offered to either sleeve it with stock style sleeves or buy a new block. I need to talk with them some more to decide what to do.

 

Bore it to 81.5 and have them buy you new pistons. I wouldn't trust them sleeving if that can't get a simple bore and hone right.

 

I wouldn't be too scared of running .002" clearance. How do you know that is your clearance anyway?

 

Its all taken care of now. And for the .002'' clearance. I used the specs from the Helms for pistons sizes and that is the best case option using the range of piston sizes as described.

 

To answer your piston question. Hmotorsonline.com has pistons (OEM) that are really good price compared to a stealership.