It's probably a good 6 months before I'll have enough money to start rebuilding my engine, but I just got home from school and have over a month of tons of free time, so I thought it'd start posting

When all is said and done I will probably be running around 17 psi, will have a larger T3/T4 turbo, cobra MAFS, re-tuned JWT ECU, 550 cc injectors (?? Haven't done any research on this stuff...this is all down the road--first the engine rebuild). I'll be looking for at least 330 RWHP or so...I keep the projected #'s conservative so that I don't become disappointed.

Anyway, http://www.ka24de.com has these new "supertech coated racing pistons" that sound pretty damn nice...and they're the exact CR I was looking for (9:1).

So I'm asking all you people out there with experience/knowledge to tell me your opinions of these pistons (Ivan, WDRacing, etc).

The following is the description of them from the website:

"The long awaited Supertech forged pistons are finally here! This set of 4 phosphate coated forged pistons come complete with Chrome Moly steel wrist pins, wire clip locks, and specially designed gas nitrided rings for high levels of forced induction and nitrous oxide applications. The gas nitrided rings included with this set are the very best and strongest currently available on the market! Furthermore, these pistons have extra thick ring lands to handle extreme use. The Supertech pistons are currently in stock and ready to ship.

Supertech incorporates more than 35 years of experience in the design of racing pistons with the utilization of the latest CAD software & Finite Element Analysis. These pistons are manufactured from extruded high-silicon enhanced 4032 alloy (with additional Cu, Ni & Mg) which has low thermal expansion, excellent wear resistance and higher thermal conductivity. Because of the low expansion alloy used, these pistons can be installed with tighter piston-to-wall clearance than conventional forged pistons, resulting in an exceptionally quiet engine due to reduced piston slap.

The 3 forging step process used yields a fine structural grain oriented in fibers in the same direction of the stresses. Several heat treatments provide the piston with a high tensile strength and evenly distributed hardness. These pistons are then submitted to several machining steps in specially designed machines and in conventional CNC machines with special diamond tools for dimensional precision, perpendicularity and flatness of the ring grooves. The pistons also feature contact reduction grooves, and have honed & reamed pin bores for precise fit. The wrist pins are constructed of cold extruded Chrome Moly steel for exceptional strength. Quality control is performed after every step of the manufacturing process in climate controlled environments to ensure reliability of dimensions."

That's a helluva description, but you get the idea....

How would these compare to Ross 9:1 pistons, which are almost the exact same price w/o the high-tech "supertech" coating...EDIT..just realized they don't offer 9:1 ross pistons on that site...does Ross make 9:1 for the KADE or just 8.5?

And finally, how would the supertechs compare to the Arias forged pistons (8.8:1)...or any other forged pistons for that matter (as close to 9:1 as possible)

I know it's sort of an invalid comparison because they all have different CRs, but I'd rather have the 9:1's because I want the off-boost driveability...But what I basically want to know is what the opinion is for the BEST, longest-lasting, best manufactured, strongest, most successful forged pistons they are for around ~330rwhp for the KA. I haven't seen any all-out comparisons on the best pistons for the KA-T, so start posting your views/experiences!

Thanks...

there is a pretty decent article regarding forged aftermarket pistons in DSport this month. . . .talking about the same manufacturers you are thinking of I think.

i have ross 9:1 pistons. dont know where you can order them from, but prolly any performance shop that deals ross.

just from personal experience my ross's have held 19psi and 365+rwhp and 384+rwtq. these numbers are decent but nothing crazy. is there anything wrong with your motor? 330rwhp is definitly acheivable as a reliable setup on a stock motor

Structure240sx wrote:i have ross 9:1 pistons. dont know where you can order them from, but prolly any performance shop that deals ross.

just from personal experience my ross's have held 19psi and 365+rwhp and 384+rwtq. these numbers are decent but nothing crazy. is there anything wrong with your motor? 330rwhp is definitly acheivable as a reliable setup on a stock motor

So where did ou get your 9:1 ross pistons from?

No, there's nothingi wrong at all with my motor...but I want to build it basically for peace of mind, knowing that I'll be able to thrash the hell out of it all day long and never worry about parts breaking or feeling guilty at the end of the day...

If I wanted 330 rwhp from my current setup I'd need to get a new MAFS, get my JWT ECU re-tuned, and put larger fuel injectors in, and probably upgrade the turbo....I'd rather get the engine re-built first and then start upgrading the rest of othe stuff (turbo, MAFS, ecu, fuel injectors, etc), because I think it's a lot better to have a powerplant you know isn't going to fail you and then start upping the boost. Plus, an engine rebuild is $3000 as it is... a new turbo + retuned ECU + fuel injectors + MAF is another $900 or so

However, now that I think about it...if I got all of the fuel/turbo stuff covered first, then I could run the engine stock until it fails me...esp. considering I am planning on rebuilding it anyhow.

But this is off-topic

Boost Veteran: Never heard of Dsport...do you think barnes and noble carries that magazine?

no matter how much you build an engine, its not indestructable. you can still break a built engine just as easy as you could a stock one. the only difference, is that you spent 1k+ on the built, and another stock ka longblock is $200

p.s.--B&N has dsport

A built engine just gives you a larger margin of error.

nonchalant rage wrote:no matter how much you build an engine, its not indestructable. you can still break a built engine just as easy as you could a stock one. the only difference, is that you spent 1k+ on the built, and another stock ka longblock is $200

p.s.--B&N has dsport

Of course it's not indestructible, but if you have 2 engines, identical boost, tuning, etc, and one is WELL built, broken in, etc, with all nice, forged, new parts, and one has 100k miles on it and everything is OEM, the built one should CERTAINLY last longer and be able to take a helluva lot more abuse. If it won't, then there's absolutely no point in ever rebuilding your engine...Also, it's not exactly easy to just swap full engines into a car, and I don't have the equipment to do so, so when this engine is built it's going to last a long time.

but it the identical tunning for both is worng then they will both be destroyed.

just think of ryan, klattr1, that had his first built block blown after 50miles at 14psi on his original jwt tune.

then theres other people that have 350rwhp on stock ka-t's for years. these i hear are also jwt tunes. just confirm that the timing and fuel maps are right and you are good to go.

getting up to and over the 300rwhp mark is almost useless on the street with street tires. you wont be able to floor it until 4th gear. so run race gas whne you go to the track and really get to use all of that power.

if your compression is good i say just stick with the stock block and make sure its got a good tune

btw, i dont know where my pistons were purchased from. i bought my motor already built with about 10k mi on it. it was built by AEBS in LA. from what i have heard they are an awesome shop

The usual answer: Its all about tuning... I believe CP pistons are rumored to have the tightest piston-to-wall clearances.

BTW MarkEmark, off topic but those rims are teh sex.

The quality of a forged piston comes down to its finish tooling. The more efficient the setup and steps of the tooling process, the tighter the fit and better the integrity of a piston. Call the piston manufacture your interested in and ask about their tooling process and how it compares to other manufactures. Its interesting to hear what they say if you actually get thru far enough to talk to someone who knows about it. The smaller amount of steps the better, the ones i use are 2 step (setup two different times) and are the tightest fit quality pistons i could find. Naturally this was very important as they now reside in a full blown NA ka hybrid. I ordered them custom made to my needs but they are basically a ka piston.

they are Probe Industries http://probeindustries.com/Pistons/pistons.htm

MarkEmark wrote:Boost Veteran: Never heard of Dsport...do you think barnes and noble carries that magazine?

Probably because its primarily a Honda mag, but yes I think I bought it from Barnes and Noble.

Does anyone know what 8.8:1 ratio is? Do you know what relevence it has? What's the differenece between the 8.8:1 and the 9:1 ratio? I've been searching for the answer, but I just haven't looked in the right place. Any of you guys know this?

the difference is .2 compression ratio, not really a significant difference between the ratios. I actually had Arias 8.8:1 pistons in my KA-T.

I would look into Wiseco. They are the biggest piston manufacturer with the most resources to build the best pistons possible.

virus77 wrote:the difference is .2 compression ratio, not really a significant difference between the ratios. I actually had Arias 8.8:1 pistons in my KA-T.

Well...yes I can do math. I do see that 8.8 and 9 is 0.2 away. My question is more on what is the difference between a higher or lower compresion ratio. What is that ratio mean? what does the 8.8 or the 9 mean? I dunno...maybe I'm asking a question that can't be answered. I'm just trying to get the true meaning of the ratio to understand it better.

hahah, your a funny newb. The ratio is the amount of space that the cars pistons compress the Air/Fuel mixture into on the top of the compression stroke, damn its kinds hard to word. Turbo charged engines usually run between 8.5:1 to a 9:1 compression ratio. Normally aspirated (non turbo) performance cars run around 11.5:1 ratio. Lower ratio allow you to run higher boost with room for error against detonation. The higher ratio on Normally aspirated cars allow them to get as much power as they can from a motor since its not going to be seeing boost.

As you can see 11.5:1 and 8.5:1 is a big difference and can cause a turbo car to blow and a normally aspirated car to run like crap. But the .2 difference you were speaking of is almost negligible to the point that you will never notice the difference.
Modified by virus77 at 9:13 PM 7/26/2005

Oh...so let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. The higher the compression ratio, lets take the 11.5:1 ratio, the less space there will be on the full stroke of the piston. And for the turbo'd engines, because of the forced induction, you want a little more space.

Am I thinking the oppisite?? or is this right lol

You got it right, less space means the mixture has been cramed into a smaller tigther place. And with the less space on the hihger ratio there is also higher cylinder pressure so adding boost on top is a bad combination.

I like Ross... but have no data to back it up.

Whoa dead thread revival, CAN I GET A WITNESS!!

K..thanks

Thanks for the clarification.

Arias pistons have the record for the most HP in a KA. 638 whp.

KA-T wrote:K..thanks

Thanks for the clarification.

How come the n00b has the best user name out of anyone here?!? KA-T?!? Damn, nice and simple, I wish my name were KA-T

But anyway, back to the topic, the new cars these days all run super high compression, naturally aspirated or even turbo, to make the max amount of power they can....unfortunately, this necessitates the use of STRICTLY premium fuel, n/a or FI, and I dono how much premium gas is near any of you guys, but it's like $2 friggin .75 here. Unbelievable. When I got my car 3 years ago they sold 94 octane for like $1.59. Amazing.

The new Audi A4 direct injection 2.0 liter turbocharged engines run 10.5:1 compression. 10.5:1 compression is pretty high (or it used to be) for a naturally aspirated street engine. 11.5:1 is pretty damn high (our KA's stock are 9.5:1) and is usually reserved for high performance engines making a lot of power out or not much displacement (eg, the ferrari F430...4.3 liter V8 making 480+ hp, or the S2000, 2.0 liter making 240 hp n/a).

Back to your specific question about 8.8:1 versus 9.0:1 is you probably won't feel much of a difference at all between those two ratios. A lot of people who aren't looking for CRAZY power levels like to go with 9.0:1 because it offers better off-boost drivability (more power when not boosting).

I'm running 9:1 wisecos, and I do believe wiseco makes some of the best pistons out there today....they have their OWN forging plant...it's pretty much all they do, make pistons. They make pistons for almost any internal combustion engine that exists. I did have a link book-marked where an independent third party tested pistons from all the top-manufacturers. And wiseco came out on top for being the best built, with the tightest tolerances, yadda yadda yadda. And, they're some of the CHEAPEST too! Mine were $450 with rings/wrist pins, etc.

I found it MarkEmark.

Piston comparison

I remembered the name of the site off the top of my head somehow.haha

I am using SuperTech 9:1. I have watched people running crazy amounts of boost on 8.8-9:1 compression so I figured they would be fine. I am not going to say that SuperTech makes the best out there but I have seen how there LS1/LT1 stuff works and figured I would be fine. To be honest I dunno if you can say one is better than the other, they are all pretty good. To be honest if I had the cash I would build up stuff the EXACT same that Ivan does, but that's just me.

Hahaha. Yeah! How did I get the name "KA-T"??? I think it's just one of those names that everyone thinks it's taken. I knew it was going to be taken...but I thought I'd give it a try. I was surprised myself

Back to the subject, after reading most of the reviews from these different piston company's, it doesn't look like you can go wrong with any of them. This thread has been informitive for me..

I prefer Ross cause it's my last name.

Im local to Arias so I go down to their plant to pick up my products and its a nice operation and they do quality work. Also Ivan runs them from soundperformance so my votes on Arias, but wiseco does look like its a nice piston.

That test works for me. My two choices were Wiseco and Arias pistons.