Are the pistons in a 360 press fit, or floaters?
Here the deal, I pulled the 383 out of my 70 this past weekend. I plan to go back to a small block. I have a 72 360 that I had rebuilt a few years ago, first go round I picked out the wrong pistons and ended up with a compression ratio of about 11.5:1. The engine was for my daily driver pickup so that wasn't going to cut it. So I had the machinist pull the pistons and rods out and replace them with stock pistons on a set of 318 rods I had. Unfortunatley I didn't break in the rings properly and they never seated right so the engine always used oil. I eventually pulled the 360 out and put a 318 in the truck. So I now have this 360 with about 40K miles on the machine work (bored .030). The pistons and rings have about 20K miles on them. So while surveying my options I was thinking about just freshening up this 360 and reusing it. I was looking at the Speed Pro 116CP 360 pistons and noticed that they are floater style. Am I going to have to take the pistons and rods to a machine shop to get the old pistons pressed off? What I mean is, is the floater/pressed aspect determined by the piston or the rod?
The other thing I was considering was just pulling the rods/pistons out, re-ringing them, and then putting them back in. Where would I get a ball hone from? I don't like the look of those cylinder deglazers only, but I never see the ball style hones that I've used in the past.
Thanks