Better acceleration?

volaredon said
which I did those measurements. Though I didn't get the parts back between the bore job and the milling of the block face, dry assemble and send back for them to finish. The 30-thou mill on the block deck was a wild guess on my part as to what I was gonna need milled off of the block, to get where I wanted this engine to be, and I tried to compensate once I had the block assembled and measured for piston position/ and then had the machine shop CC the head after the valve job, but before telling them how much I wanted it milled..... then I CCd the head once I had it back in my hands.
I got this engine as a basket case at a swap meet, originally bought for the super 6 stack that was part of the package, was a "gotta buy it all to get what I was after"situation, and as such it was missing the pistons and rods.
I then bought a set of NOS /6 connecting rods from a popular due hard /6 racer over on the other/6 site, and upon dropping e block crank and head off for machine work I bought the 0.020 over pistons that the machine shop said it would need and the pistons I ended up with were the pistons I ended up with....

Deck height is well known for most engines. Machine shops can measure it easily. Stroke is easily measured as well as con rod length. So, deck height minus 1/2 the stroke minus con rod length gives the remaining for piston CD. At this point off the shelf pistons or custom pistons is the decision to make. The machine shop can measure the bores to determine the oversize of the piston required. This is then when cost becomes a big part of the decision making. Also you can look to the bore diameters and piston CD's of other engines that may be used at less cost than ordering custom pistons.
People looking for more displacement for their Buick/Olds aluminium 215 V8s have for years bored them out and put larger diameter sleeves in to use Pinto 4 cylinder or 305 Chev off the shelf stock replacement pistons.
The point with this is to plan your build up front before laying your hard earned money on the parts counter. This way you get what you want or need instead of what someone with a glowing box in front of them tells you what is best for you.
You could build an engine using a 170 block, 198 crank, 225 rods and I think Neon pistons are used. This gives 205 or 210 CID, is lighter and may make more power.
A turbo is possibly the easiest to get mounted and plumbed. Otherwise a good used 3800 supercharger should work. Displacement is close. You could take all the SEFI components off the 3800 to make it all work. Tuners have the software to tune the GM ECM for your application. Could turn your engine into a sleeper.