Northstar rebuild: Will style (Page 2/117)
Will DEC 30, 10:36 AM
GM uses centrifugally cast grey iron cylinder liners, which are cast in place when the block is poured. Some other companies like Honda, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes are messing with aluminum cylinders, but I don't know much about them. I've just heard of high silicon aluminum from European manufacturers and fibre reinforced aluminum from Japanese manufacturers.

Resleeving is definitely out of the question. That's a $2500 operation. I'll build such an engine eventually... but not right now.

An Aurora crank is the same as a N* crank.

This is going to be a high RPM N/A engine, no N2O, no boost, just compression. It doesn't need anything super exotic as long as it can take 8K RPM or so. I'm also looking for cheap. that's why I was looking at OTS (off the shelf) Chevy rods. Can't get much cheaper than that. Right now I'm just building a short block. Heads and cams work will come later.

CHRFab makes some nice stuff, but they're expen$ive. Per the prices on their website, rods and pistons would come to $2000, which may be necessary if you're building a 1,000 HP enigne. However, for my purposes, $500-600 for rods and $500-600 for pistons seems more reasonable. Summit has full floating pin 6.000" Chevy rods from Lunati for $400. If pistons can be had reasonably, then paying an extra $100 for proper N* rods would be fine.

I'm not looking for an overbore to add more HP... I'd just like to use a convenient piston size. Too bad the N* bore isn't 94.5mm, then I could bore it 0.016" and use high pin 305 pistons...

I really don't know who to get in touch with for custom pistons or rods, however.

------------------
'87 Fiero GT: Northstar, Getrag, TGP wheels, rear sway bar, rod end links, bushings, etc.
'90 Pontiac 6000 SE AWD: Leaking ABS unit fixed, load levelling rear suspension fixed, still slow

aaron88 DEC 30, 10:57 AM
Given you budget and power requirements, you could get new rings, gaskets and a cam grind along with some heavier valve springs (dare I say cams and springs from aforementioned Cadillac fab). It’ll give you about 80 more ponies and a 7800 redline.

It’s less work?

Aaron

.

86 FIERO GT DEC 30, 11:16 AM
Will, sorry to hear about the head gasket, if you need any factory parts let me know.

If you want some spare rods from a 93 or 94, I have six spares from a bad motor I have laying around.

Would it be that difficult to go in and clean up a pair of heads without paying someone. I have done some polishing in some aluminum 350 heads, but would it really be that effective for me to go grind and polish alittle in a set of heads? CHRFAB is expensive because he is the only one that is selling N* parts. He needs some competition, hint hint Will.

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bushroot DEC 30, 04:12 PM

quote
Originally posted by Will:

CHRFab makes some nice stuff, but they're expen$ive. Per the prices on their website, rods and pistons would come to $2000, which may be necessary if you're building a 1,000 HP enigne. However, for my purposes, $500-600 for rods and $500-600 for pistons seems more reasonable. Summit has full floating pin 6.000" Chevy rods from Lunati for $400. If pistons can be had reasonably, then paying an extra $100 for proper N* rods would be fine.

I really don't know who to get in touch with for custom pistons or rods, however.


http://www.bbandtracing.com/EAGLE.html CADILLAC NORTHSTAR (3/8 bolt) 5.943" $499
http://www.rosspistons.com/custom/eightcylinder.php3 The site is down for maintenance, but I believe they were $613 for a set.

Will DEC 30, 04:49 PM
I'd found the BB&T racing page before. I hope the Ross website comes back up soon.

If I can put together the reciprocating parts for $1000-$1100, that should work pretty well.

------------------
'87 Fiero GT: Northstar, Getrag, TGP wheels, rear sway bar, rod end links, bushings, etc.
'90 Pontiac 6000 SE AWD: Leaking ABS unit fixed, load levelling rear suspension fixed, still slow

bushroot DEC 30, 05:22 PM
That's the same package I'll have in my second engine. If you decide to build a 2000+, you can use those rods and pistons. You'd have to use both though. The wrist pin is a little smaller on the 2000+ engines.
jstricker DEC 30, 05:39 PM
Like STS said, the sleeves are steel, cast in place in the aluminum block, and they are a very HARD steel. When we honed mine, we had to get pretty aggressive with it to get a decent pattern. My engine had about 135K on it IIRC and measured "0" taper in the cylinders but the pattern at the top was getting pretty weak so we just freshened it up a little bit.

One of the first engines I can recall to actually use an aluminum bore was one of the silicate aluminum variety in the old Vegas. They were not known for their longevity.

John Stricker

quote
Originally posted by Fiero STS:

Cylinders in the N* are steel. All of the sleeveless aluminum bores I,ve seen have been chrome plated or very high silicate aluminum ether of which cannot be bored. Will, What about an Aruora crankshaft is it the same stroke and smaller bore or a shorter stroke and same bore? Also did you ever swap ecms? or are you still running the stock ecm with the test cell chip?
jstricker DEC 30, 05:50 PM
There has been a guy on EBay that's been trying to sell a set of Eagle H beam rods for a couple of months now. The last auction he had for them ended with no bids, again. You might email him about them but they didn't seem like a screaming deal to me. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2449717768&sspagename=ADME%3AB%3ASS%3AUS%3A1

Arias makes custom pistons to your specs. All it takes is $$$. I've heard that they will NOT make pistons matching CHRFabs specs, though, as Alan has a lot of time in the design of them and they give him some respect on exclusivity. I haven't checked that out personally, but I've heard it from a couple of places.

John Stricker

quote
Originally posted by Will:

GM uses centrifugally cast grey iron cylinder liners, which are cast in place when the block is poured. Some other companies like Honda, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes are messing with aluminum cylinders, but I don't know much about them. I've just heard of high silicon aluminum from European manufacturers and fibre reinforced aluminum from Japanese manufacturers.

Resleeving is definitely out of the question. That's a $2500 operation. I'll build such an engine eventually... but not right now.

An Aurora crank is the same as a N* crank.

This is going to be a high RPM N/A engine, no N2O, no boost, just compression. It doesn't need anything super exotic as long as it can take 8K RPM or so. I'm also looking for cheap. that's why I was looking at OTS (off the shelf) Chevy rods. Can't get much cheaper than that. Right now I'm just building a short block. Heads and cams work will come later.

CHRFab makes some nice stuff, but they're expen$ive. Per the prices on their website, rods and pistons would come to $2000, which may be necessary if you're building a 1,000 HP enigne. However, for my purposes, $500-600 for rods and $500-600 for pistons seems more reasonable. Summit has full floating pin 6.000" Chevy rods from Lunati for $400. If pistons can be had reasonably, then paying an extra $100 for proper N* rods would be fine.

I'm not looking for an overbore to add more HP... I'd just like to use a convenient piston size. Too bad the N* bore isn't 94.5mm, then I could bore it 0.016" and use high pin 305 pistons...

I really don't know who to get in touch with for custom pistons or rods, however.
Will DEC 30, 07:32 PM

quote
Originally posted by jstricker:

Like STS said, the sleeves are steel, cast in place in the aluminum block, and they are a very HARD steel. When we honed mine, we had to get pretty aggressive with it to get a decent pattern. My engine had about 135K on it IIRC and measured "0" taper in the cylinders but the pattern at the top was getting pretty weak so we just freshened it up a little bit.


The Ross pistons are exactly the same diameter as stock, right? What did your bore clearance end up being? Gapless rings? What other machining did you have done to the block?

How did/will you handle break-in? I've been thinking about following the break-in procedures outlined here: http://mototuneusa.com/thanx.htm

The sleeves are actually steel, not cast iron? Shop manual calls out cast grey iron... But we all know that FSM's are not necessarily 100% reliable for some things...

------------------
'87 Fiero GT: Northstar, Getrag, TGP wheels, rear sway bar, rod end links, bushings, etc.
'90 Pontiac 6000 SE AWD: Leaking ABS unit fixed, load levelling rear suspension fixed, still slow

bushroot DEC 30, 07:49 PM

quote
Originally posted by jstricker:

There has been a guy on EBay that's been trying to sell a set of Eagle H beam rods for a couple of months now. The last auction he had for them ended with no bids, again. You might email him about them but they didn't seem like a screaming deal to me. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=244971 7768&sspagename=ADME%3AB%3ASS%3AUS%3A1

Arias makes custom pistons to your specs. All it takes is $$$. I've heard that they will NOT make pistons matching CHRFabs specs, though, as Alan has a lot of time in the design of them and they give him some respect on exclusivity. I haven't checked that out personally, but I've heard it from a couple of places.

John Stricker


I E-mailed the guy about the Eagle rods about a month ago. He told me he'd sell them to me for $450 shipped. I don't think he's in a real hurry to get rid of them. He had horrible grammar too. I don't think English was his first language.


Edit: That didn't come out the way I intended. He was simply very hard to understand.

[This message has been edited by bushroot (edited 12-30-2003).]