ironhead 3.4 pistons

[geldartb]

ok ive heard of people using the ironhead 3.4 pistons to bring compression up, so would these be the one found in the 95 era camaro\firebird engine.

[Superdave]

ok ive heard of people using the ironhead 3.4 pistons to bring compression up, so would these be the one found in the 95 era camaro\firebird engine.

Yep... that's alot of compression though, lol

[geldartb]

how much does it bring it up from stock. i couldnt find anything on how much it brought it up.

[Superdave]

the CR calculator says it'll be 13.9:1

9.5:1 is stock

[geldartb]

holy crap. didnt think it would bring it up to super crazy levels. ah well thanks for finding that out. what about running with the headgaskets from the ironhead, from the cr calc it says there .020 thinner than the stock 3400 ones, ok using the cr calc says it will bring it up to 10.1.
now the question is can the ironhead gaskets be used with the 3400

[Superdave]

Nope...

the 3400's pistons pop out of the deck by .020", general rule is you want to keep .035-.040 clearance between the piston and the head.


Now if you were to have .020" machined off the top of the 3400's pistons you could use that .040 gasket w/o problems and have around 11:1 (random guess).

[geldartb]

yeah i kinda figured that they wouldnt work. ah well back to the design board i guess. well if you have any creative ways to boost compression let me know.

[Superdave]

yeah i kinda figured that they wouldnt work. ah well back to the design board i guess. well if you have any creative ways to boost compression let me know.

I did

[geldartb]

so the ironhead head gaskets work with no problems. just so i dont f'up and get the wrong gaskets these are coming from the 93-95 camaro

[Superdave]

you can use the .045 compressed thickness Graphite gaskets for a 3.4 Camaro made by ROL.. but you MUST have .020" shaved off the tops of the pistons or bad things will happen.


i'll have to do the math on how much this will raise the compression.. i'll let you know. I don't think anyone has ever done it before...

[GPXSS]

This has been done on 3100's and 3400's and has worked fine.

I leave this place for a few years and it goes to hell, where is everyone?

[geldartb]

This has been done on 3100's and 3400's and has worked fine.

I leave this place for a few years and it goes to hell, where is everyone?

the pistons or the gaskets.

[GPXSS]

Both. I personally have run a 3100 with 3.1 iron head pistons and the iron head gasket, I know of 1 other person to do the same with a 3400/3.4.

If you run the pistons, you need to use the thinner head gasket to make up for the decrease in deck height of the pistons.

CR will be high, but you will only need to do some chamber work to the heads for it not to be a problem. (smooth everything out, open them up a bit for larger chamber area)

[geldartb]

i see thank you thats the info i was looking for. sorry for all the dumb questions. i never really saw anything about using these items.

just to make sure these are the pistons and gaskets found on the 93-95 camaro\firebird with the 3.4 right.

[Superdave]

Yes, the 93-95 Camaro 3.4...


you'll have to do alot of chamber work to get that compresison down, tuning would suck that high too... If you go that route (3.4 pistons) then atleast use the .060 gaskets to take it down a little..


3.4 RWD pistons in a 3400 and the .040 gaskets it's 13.9:1
3.4 RWD pistons in a 3400 and the .060 gaskets it's 12.9:1
3.4 RWD pistons in a 3400 and the .045 ROL gaskets: 13.64:1

with the 3100 GPXSS is talking about he's got 11.88:1, that's not bad at all...