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keith black pistons #941739
03/03/11 12:22 AM
03/03/11 12:22 AM
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Iowa
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beaver77 Offline OP
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I am installing a set of keith black pistons, kb400 in a 383. Anyone used these or have any tips or tricks

Thanks

Re: keith black pistons [Re: beaver77] #941740
03/03/11 12:46 AM
03/03/11 12:46 AM
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JohnRR Offline
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Such as ??? make sure you set the gap of the top ring correctly or you will bust the top of the piston off , otherwise there is nothing special .

Re: keith black pistons [Re: JohnRR] #941741
03/03/11 02:06 AM
03/03/11 02:06 AM
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Cincinnati, Ohio
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superbeedave Offline
mopar
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I have them in my 69 383 also. Like he said, make sure ring end gap
is gapped correctly or you will break top ring. Also, if using the 906
heads which these are what those pistons were basically made for. Your
pistons are as close to "zero" deck as possible. Zero to get any kind of compression at all! Or even a few thousands above the deck wouldn't hurt at all. That's providing you are using the 906 open chamber heads.

Re: keith black pistons [Re: superbeedave] #941742
03/03/11 11:17 AM
03/03/11 11:17 AM
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JohnRR Offline
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Quote:

I have them in my 69 383 also. Like he said, make sure ring end gap
is gapped correctly or you will break top ring. Also, if using the 906
heads which these are what those pistons were basically made for. Your
pistons are as close to "zero" deck as possible. Zero to get any kind of compression at all! Or even a few thousands above the deck wouldn't hurt at all. That's providing you are using the 906 open chamber heads.




Do you mean make sure the pistons are as close to zero as possible ? Because the KB pistons are .024 in the hole by design.

If they made the kb400 because of 906's they did it WRONG , they make a step head piston for the 440 and the 400 to work with open chamber heads but instead they put a flame travel RESTRICTING dome on the 383 ??? They screwed up wit hpiston design for big block mopars in general and the 400 was a poor attempt to correct it.

The kb400 will make the engine 10.0 if you put it at zero deckand that's not a good idea with open chambers heads unless you have 100oct available at the pump i would think , I'll be finding that one out shortly , but I used a flat top and cut my heads to get 10.0 ...

Re: keith black pistons [Re: JohnRR] #941743
03/03/11 01:06 PM
03/03/11 01:06 PM
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Cincinnati, Ohio
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superbeedave Offline
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So that is why Keith Black has a note about these pistons to be carefull when choosing heads, we don't have premium gas anymore. Mine are .024 down in the hole and I am pretty sure I'm running about 9.3
to one compression. I thought I did my homework on these pistons as far as my research goes. I learned more after the rebuild than i did before the rebuild. Considering 2 years ago I couldn't find any pistons with a compression height of 1.932 which is what the stock pistons were that came out. And they are fairly cheap. $329.00 to be exact. If I could do it over again I would work on getting the zero deck height and maybe mill .02 off the 906"s or used the .02 steel head gasket. I wonder if say 84cc's closed chamber or 80cc's heads would work with these pistons? Any idea?

Re: keith black pistons [Re: superbeedave] #941744
03/03/11 01:11 PM
03/03/11 01:11 PM
Joined: Aug 2003
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Atco NJ
DJVCuda Offline
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9.4:1 setup in a .030 over 383 - runs decent for a street car with 3.23's . - 13.40;s at 104

6507793-DSCN4421.JPG (152 downloads)
Last edited by DJVCuda; 03/03/11 01:11 PM.
Re: keith black pistons [Re: DJVCuda] #941745
03/03/11 01:26 PM
03/03/11 01:26 PM
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Cincinnati, Ohio
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superbeedave Offline
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Looks good! Which heads are you running?

Last edited by superbeedave; 03/03/11 01:28 PM.
Re: keith black pistons [Re: superbeedave] #941746
03/03/11 01:45 PM
03/03/11 01:45 PM
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Suffolk,VA
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ireland383 Offline
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Quote:

So that is why Keith Black has a note about these pistons to be carefull when choosing heads, we don't have premium gas anymore. Mine are .024 down in the hole and I am pretty sure I'm running about 9.3
to one compression. I thought I did my homework on these pistons as far as my research goes. I learned more after the rebuild than i did before the rebuild. Considering 2 years ago I couldn't find any pistons with a compression height of 1.932 which is what the stock pistons were that came out. And they are fairly cheap. $329.00 to be exact. If I could do it over again I would work on getting the zero deck height and maybe mill .02 off the 906"s or used the .02 steel head gasket. I wonder if say 84cc's closed chamber or 80cc's heads would work with these pistons? Any idea?



I'm running them with an 80cc Stealth head and have 9.9:1.







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