Needs some advise on couple of wrist pin issues:

1-Is there an advantage of a floating wrist pin over the pressed in. I have noticed that the floating or bushed type are a few $ more and that they have larger bolts-7/16 instead of 3/8 (Eagle SIR 5956 FB rods)

2-I have a new set of Sealed Power pistons (H336CP) for my 351 W and the spec say pressed wrist pin. Can you use a bushed connecting rod with these pistons?

Thanks for the help!

 

Those pistons lack the grooves in the wrist pin bores to install either lock rings or spirolocs to retain the pins in the bores. And unless you're building an engine for dedicated racing only, pressed pins are fine. Floating pins are nice to have, but hardly necessary for 99% of applications. They're also nice in that you can mount the pistons on the rods yourself instead of having to pay a machineshop to do it for you.

 

What he said.

I have rebuilt a number of engines that either came stock with floating pins or were rebuilt with that type of piston and being able to assemble your own piston/rod combo instead of paying a shop to do it is nice. My last build for someone else was a 4 cyl engine and it cost me $100 in labor to install the piston on the rod.

 

Thanks
My research shows that if the piston isn't listed for a floating pin, then you need to use the pressed in pins. If I every build another engine, I will go with floating pin pistons (since the bolts are bigger-7/16 vs. 3/8). I guess the cash cow will get bigger as I shell out to get the rods pressed on the pistons

 

Rod bolt size has nothing to do with floating vs pressed pins. My 331 has floating pins and 3/8 bolts.