Assembly (continued)
I can be so dense, at times.. I already put the camshaft in, along with 6 pistons and -rings. Only then did I start thinking about the weight of the new pistons compared to the old ones. The new ones are (including the pins) 105 grams lighter than stock. Per piston ! Obviously, the new pistons had to come out again. I double checked by asking a question about this on MoparChat, where Pro confirmed what I already had guessed. Major bummer. (to say the least)
Next I called the first of only 2 balancing shops in this country that will tackle a V-8. The first one absolutely insisted on separating the new pistons from the rods, because else he couldn't weigh them. Because I witnessed the force being applied to get the old pistons off the rods, this didn't sound like a viable option. I don't want oval pistons (or any other artistically correct shape, for that matter..) Also, if you already know the weight of the piston, the rings and the pin (KB-Silvolite's specs), and then weigh the small end of the rod including the piston, you only need to do a lttle math to get the small-end rod weight, and start calculating the mass of the required bobweights. Fortunately, the second Dutch V-8 balancer agreed with me on that, though he warned about not being able to compensate for weight differences among the rod-ends themselves. Those weight were not far off. Besides, this motor is going in front of an A727 in a W200. If i don't modify the governor, it will never go beyond 4200 rpm.. (Though after having put some 2000 miles on it, I'm seriously tempted to start messing with it.)
After some 2 weeks I could pick the parts back up. The crank has 4 pretty deep and wide (one of the few things I forgot to measure...) holes in the first and last counterweights now. At last I can once more start assembling the block. Hopefully the pictures at the bottom of this page are the last ones I made of the empty short block..
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