Are the pistons in a 360 press fit, or floaters?

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Lars

Lars

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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
 
also. the fit of the pistons is determined by the rod. It will have a bushing on he small end if its floating and no bushing if it's pressed. the pins for all small block pistons are the same diameter.
 
OK cool. They ought to be press then. The rods I used were out of an 85 318. Think I'm just gonna re-ring those pistons anyway.
 
I would just re-ring the 360 you have. pressing off pistons can be a crap shoot as to whether they can be reused. I havent been sucessfull at it yet...lol. Ball hones should be able to be located fairly easy, but I've also used the stiff 3 stone hones before with no bad results. If the bores are so bad the straight stone wont mark everywhere, it's not going to get really good with a ball hone anyway.
 
I "should" be OK with a re-ring. There is only 40K on the machine work.
 
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