altereddoug

I have a problem with my merlin 3 block. Not necessarily the block. I purchased a block in a short block form. Wiseco pistons and eagle crank,rods. Well I never thought I should tear it apart and mic everything from a well known builder on the east coast, begins with Shaf. Anyway with only 70 runs on the motor, over the winter I pulled it out to do some work on the chassis. And was getting ready to put it back in and decided to checked the mains and found it had ingested a piece of dirt or something in the #3 main. So I pulled it all apart and had the crank polished and was cleaning up the pistons when I noticed they had alot of wear on the top "anti detonation" or area just above the top ring land. I was wore these groves almost flat, and on the opposite side on the piston skirt. So I checked the dimension on the pistons, as specified by the manufacturer. It is 4.4935 and then the bore of the block is anywhere from 4.5005 to 4.5015. And the suggested clearance is .005. Giving me a .007 to .008 P/W clearance. Not to mention I had two cylinders with .002 taper....Talked to Wiseco and they told me with this clearance and a short skirted piston that this was causing the excessive wear on the pistons. And it would not be very adviseable to run them in this situation. Meaning I would have to scrap these pistons, bore the motor .030 over and rebalance the entire assembly. Or I could get another new block and sell the old one and still spend the same amount of money, but go to a dart block