Who here has changed their pistons on a build? Seems everywhere I search and read everyone does rods but not pistons. What's the go?

 

I have not done this, but I would not suggest it unless you were going to changing displacement. Not worth the expense. Besides the aftermarket pistons can cause increased oil consumption. Porsche did a pretty damn good job with the stock pistons.

 

I remember Scott (Divexxtreme) talking about this in his "build thread", and if I remember correctly, his builder (TPC I think) thinks that the original MAHLE pistons are very good and the majority of the aftermarket pistons are not better than the OEM ones.

I'm pretty sure that BBI offers some special MAHLE pistons treated with a nice ceramic coating. There should be a thread about this.

 

This is my thoughts as well. I wonder what the weight difference is between them.

 

Yeah I have read his build thread and the one thing I remember is to change my lifters on a build. I was thinking of just spending the $$'s on coating them.

 

Stock Mahle's are very good slugs. Not many reasons to change them out, most being disp increase, CR change, or due to damage. Been proven many times over that Mahle has the best metallurgy.

I've used custom JE's built to specific specs by Charles at LNE for the specific bore size of the particular motor being built. FSR slug forging with hard anodized first ringlands, thermal barrier coating on the dome, and a break-in moly skirt coating.

They are a noisey piston though as the FSR slug has a very steep taper to the skirt when cold and they run a ~..0035" PTWC in the bore when cold.