is it worth the money when doing a motor rebuild to have the blocked 30 or 40 over. and if it is or is'nt is it worth to buy new pistons and keep stock rods or is it better to buy rods and pistons or leave it all alone. an am going with a big cam and ls6 heads and 38lb injectors and slp cold air and ls6 intake
and free flowing cats and long tube headers to turn downs. on a 99 camaro

 

I don't go more than .010" over on those blocks.

Buy some after-market rods, the factory ones are junk. The OEM Mahle pistons will handle what you want to do just fine, but at their cost you might as well drop a little more for a forged set and never worry about it later.

 

No bore Stock LS1 blocks :P

 

What do you base this on? Have you seen/experiesnced failures? Curious about this as many have run stock shortblocks well over 500 crank hp for years without failure, myself included.

 

From what I have heard the only "weak link" on the factory LS1 rods is the rod bolts. LS2 rods are a bit stronger and might be a cheaper upgrade if he chose to go that route, but for what he is doing IMO the stock rods should be okay. Also if he wanted to get rid of the press pin the upgrade would do that.

big power adders.... maybe then upgrading the rods should be on the list.

 

if you are going into it, just do the rods and pistons while you are there. i got mine rebuilt with diamond pistons, and used ls2 rods with arp bolts. for 200 more, i could have at least got new forged rods with arp bolts. i havent even driven the car much, but i was short on cash at the time, and wanted it done. wait and do it right.

 

You got that completely backwards. The stock rods are actually quite good, and many people use them without issue in 347/348 setups with a quality rod bolt. The pistons on the other hand, are crap.

And to the OP: a .030" overbore is impossible. You've been asking a lot of very basic LS1 questions recently that could have been answered with a 5 minute search here, Google, or even on a Ford site

Finally, rebuilds are NOT worth the time or money unless you are a machinist and have a shop. It is almost always cheaper to buy a built shortblock through one of the many aftermarket vendors that sell them. Most local type machine shops don't have the tools or experience to work on LS1s.

 

i do have a shop that i can work on it. but know machine shop so you would say leave the stock pistons and rods in the block?

 

I didn't actually - the factory rods are relatively weak and can only be re-sized if using over-size specific bearings due to the cracked cap. The LS2 rods are better, but still you are screwed if you need to resize them which is almost 100% of the time due to GM's crap for tolerances - I've gone through 3 sets of out of the box brand new rods just to come up with a complete set that is on size. Never again, always aftermarket rods.

The pistons are fine if the ring gaps are set up for the application they will be used in, they are light, the ring pack is excellent, and they can handle almost anything you throw at them. Now if your tuner is a hack and you get into detonation then you will kill the pistons pretty fast.