Doing Head Gasket Job, doing a very mild build at same time; wanting insight

[monster50iii]

So I have some leaky head gaskets and am going to pull the engine to do it. I have ties to an engine builder that will let me use his shop/equipment to do what I have planned. I want a more reliable engine, and dont plan on going past 675hp. Here's my plan:

Mahle WS headgaskets
Gasket kit
Mahle Race Cast Pistons
Main and Head studs

Im curious how one goes about balancing the setup with the new pistons?

I want to do rods, but I'm going to be kind of close to the end of my budget. I wasnt planning for this at all. But, I would like to "somewhat" do it right...ish. Seems like Wagler hasa decent street fighter rod priced at $1700. Or maybe my stock rods will be fine with the 60% LBZ tips and conservative timing. The engine has 234k on her...shes no spring chicken.

Ive read guys are shimming the valve springs to increase seat pressure, any idea when this becomes a necessity?

Im pretty much going to hold my budget to $6k MAX. Right now, without thinking about rods, I'll have $4500 into this little ordeal at the minimum. Theres always a chance we may find a surprise when we tear into it. Thanks for any input!

 

[zakkb787]

Why not use cut lb7 pistons and get some street rods. It even lbz rods. What rear truck?

 

[duramaxzak]

SoCal also sells a good budget rod for around $1700, I would do delipped LB7/LLY pistons and a aftermarket rod before doing stock rods and Mahle race cast pistons.

 

[monster50iii]

The plan is to mag the crank, and if it checks out good mine as well continue using it. I mean it's made it this far??

I just may do the socal rods.. the only thing I'm uncertain about is balancing. I have the stock damper and flex plate. Btw this is on a LMM

 

[PureHybrid]

Does the shop have the machine to balance? Or anyone to run it? Essentially you need to weight match each piston & rod assembly, then a dummy bob weight is attached to the rod journals on the crank to spin balance it.

You can shim the valve springs for more seat pressure, long as you're not running into coil bind. With those miles I'd just put new ones in and equalize the seat pressure rather than get more out of stockers $.02

 

[monster50iii]

They know what they are doing as far as balancing goes, I had to do some more digging on parts and recipes as far as internally balanced vs externally.. If I were to do pistons only and go with externally balanced to help the budget I was trying to figure out how we would rebalance it. I suppose weigh the difference in the pistons and balance accordingly.

 

[NevadaLLY]

I just had my whole setup balanced. You have to give them the entire rotating assembly from balancer through flex plate/ring gear, pistons, rods, rings, pins, etc. I had mahle race cast pistons and wagler rods and the initial balance was out by 36g (left) 37g (right). They added a little weight to the stock crank by welding in and ended up <1g overall. I would not recommend doing your mods without a balance. As others said, they weigh everything and mock it up. The mahle race cast were all dead nuts the same weight and size (I was impressed) so no need to number by cylinder. Made the job a bit more straight forward. Although they did a bit on the crank, it’s still externally balanced with the ring gear counter weight and ATI super damper.