Not impressed with Probe pistons

2409 Views 9 Replies 7 Participants Last post by bigblok86ranger, Jul 5, 2010

hotrod9

Discussion Starter · Jul 4, 2010

Had to build a short block in a hurry, only pistons available in short order were probe. Haven't heard anything bad about these so we tried them. Nothing special just .030 over for a-429 heads. No valve to piston clearance -no big deal just cut more- this was expected. Valve pocket was at wrong angle about 3 deg wrong and they varied a bit in location. Went to put the rings on and wrong ring support rails. Called them up and had them send the correct one's ups red, arrived a day late ups blue. Wrong support rails again. called them up and they said to just cut them with a pair of ***** and they still didn't fit tight on the piston i.d. tight just flopped around. Talked with kb and they sent me some that would work overnight at no charge. Not impressed with their service or there product. Also used a scat forged crank, mains on the large size had to use .001 over bearings, the same with the rods .001 over bearings and the journals varied .0004

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mudbogtom

· #2 · Jul 4, 2010

Hopefully this all works out well for you in the end result. It seems that when I have an issue like this, it tends to snowball as just the result of bad luck... and no matter how hard the supplier tries to get it right for me... other things stack up that are out of their control and it just seems to get worse the more they try. Hopefully, this is the case here.

I am in the same boat this weekend... had some parts on the way, they got delayed. Ordered some others, as one can never have too many spares down the road... overnight for Saturday delivery. Box showed up- so I could use them this long weekend

Opened them up this morning with my morning coffee, and found a bunch of FE parts in a mismarked box.

Now, I get to wait til Wednesday. I should have plenty of time to grill some Nathan's hot dogs today lol.

Tom

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bigblok86ranger

· #3 · Jul 4, 2010

Sorry to hear that I had some issues with getting parts when I was supposed to from them (not there fault though problems with suppliers) but when I did get them the quality was great. Bearing clearance on mine was .0029-.0030" and my Scat crank was less than a tenth of a thousandth difference from smallest to largest journal. My engine assembler said it was by far the nicest crank he had ever installed. Sorry to hear about your problems if you feel like doing so I would shoot Mark O'neal a pm he is the owner and of Probe and Coast High Performance I am sure he will get things straightened out to the best of his ability for you.

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138

· #4 · Jul 4, 2010

sound like you need to go with a sonnys engine... that way you would not have to "build" it yourself...

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hotrod9

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jul 4, 2010

Sonny's engine?

I built this engine with my engine builder who has over 35 yrs exp. mostly chev and hemi engines. This was the first time he has used probe pistons and probably the last based on their service

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rmcomprandy

· #6 · Jul 5, 2010

An "out of the box?", inexpensive crank which only varied by .0004" and was on the high side of spec ...
Sounds to me as though you were expecting Sonny Bryant quality at a discount price; (NOT gonna happen).

This is really typical of a builder who has built Chevy's most of the time. "Had to build a short block in a hurry" sounds to me as though you messed-up something else to be in this predicament in the first place.

I'm sorry this happened to you however, this ISN"T a Chevrolet.

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TorinoStyle2

· #7 · Jul 5, 2010

hotrod9 has a Ford powered Vega!!

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big-n-bad

· #8 · Jul 5, 2010

hotrod9 said:
Had to build a short block in a hurry, only pistons available in short order were probe. Haven't heard anything bad about these so we tried them. Nothing special just .030 over for a-429 heads. No valve to piston clearance -no big deal just cut more- this was expected. Valve pocket was at wrong angle about 3 deg wrong and they varied a bit in location. Went to put the rings on and wrong ring support rails. Called them up and had them send the correct one's ups red, arrived a day late ups blue. Wrong support rails again. called them up and they said to just cut them with a pair of ***** and they still didn't fit tight on the piston i.d. tight just flopped around. Talked with kb and they sent me some that would work overnight at no charge. Not impressed with their service or there product. Also used a scat forged crank, mains on the large size had to use .001 over bearings, the same with the rods .001 over bearings and the journals varied .0004

Wow KB sent you rail supports for free and it wasn't even for their product, that's impressive, maybe everybody should buy KB pistons? I wonder who makes them?

Let me get the whole thing strait. Your in a big hurry, throwing a short block together. A few parts need modified and fitted. And your pissed off and bad mouthing a company
all over the internet because you don't like how the rail supports fit and you have to use a set of x bearings on a scat forged crank and are complaining about out of the box tolerances.

You don't build many motors do you? Expecting everything to fall together out of the box shows that your a novice at best and like has been said you should be paying somebody that has a clue to do the hard stuff for you.

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hotrod9

Discussion Starter · #9 · Jul 5, 2010

New Engine

Please don't mis-understand me I'm real happy with the way the engine turned out. It runs close to my old engine which was a 532 and now is a 521, second race out we won. The reason we had to build one in a hurry is we broke a rod. cracking the crank and windowing the block. Should of had a spare engine but I didn't and being first in the points battle we had to "build one in a hurry".I had a dove a block in the shop and converted it to 4 bolt caps using pro-gram caps. Normally I would have the right amount of time to deal with these things as you do with any performance engines. The only reason I mentioned this is in the past I have had cranks ground by lunati and they were dead nuts. The last crank scat cast 9000 was dead nuts, so we stepped up and used the forged piece. The pistons just took a little more massaging than I was expecting and clipping suport rails with ***** sounds like bs to me

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bigblok86ranger

· #10 · Jul 5, 2010

Even the best companies have things get out the door that shouldn't once in awhile and in my opinion what these companies do to recify the situations tells people what kind of company they are. Being your situation of having to get things done so quickly it is hard if not impossible to get things straightened out within your timeframe. I had an issue with CHP not getting my parts to me when I was told and I complained on this forum and Mark seen my post and pm'd me then called me personally after business hours, my parts were at my door two days later and he had a great attitude on the phone. I hope the experience doesn't stop you from dealing with them in the future though.

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