Mark, is it $575 or $375?

I have made some bad typos, and I do need to clear that up. I didn't realize I had spun such a web of misinformation. I tried to clear up the wrist pin situation, evidently didn't do a good job of that either. I will make an earnest attempt to go back and correct the other posts that aren't accurate.



I am very sorry for the mistakes pointed out. I don't think what I'm doing, or have done, is bullshit - as John has labelled. Very unfortunate that got called, as my info exchange with him, is henceforth over. I make mistakes, and will do whatever I can to fix them when pointed out. However, this is beginning to feel like an attack on my character by John - which I don't respond to very well.



The following is an attempt to clear up any misinformation, mistakes, typos, etc that would have caused any other Hudson enthusiast some confusion. I'm actually very excited by the number of folks interested and currently building Hudson engines for performance reasons, and I have benefitted a great deal by things contributed by others in the way of information and tech. Rudy Bennett and Randy Maas have been huge helps to me, and I in no way consider myself up to that level of expertise. I'm doing my best to catch up to them, and hopefully pass along the help I've been afforded to other folks coming up in my footsteps.



I really don't know what the wrist pin fit originally, I picked it by its dimentions only from a list of "standard pins" offered by Ross. There was no "original usage" information listed. It probably is an FE Ford, I simply don't know. What I did know was that if I could pick a standard pin that the mfg had on hand, fitting it to a particular custom piston was very easy and at least the actual pin choice wouldn't constitute yet another custom fee.



Ross has the best "standard wrist pin" chart, and I took their part # to forward to Venolia. Venolia only has a number to denote pins less than 1.00" and over 1.00" diameter with a suffix to represent different features, they have no "standard pin" chart. The Ross # was 975-07-29 ; 0.975" diameter, 2.930" length, .145" wall thickness, and 144 gr. weight. Venolia didn't give me a part number for the pins they actually supplied but they were of the tapered inner diameter variety. 144 gr. is pretty heavy, I do not have the finished weight of the Venolia pins with me as that information is with the shop in Crossville.



Not only did I goof by hitting a "3" instead of the correct "5" in the $575 vs. $375, I've also misread my invoice from the crankshop and the correct price on the Venolia pistons is $525.00. The "2" looked like a "7". I added the total bill back up, and its actually $525.00.



A word about Ross Pistons. They are great pistons, a great company to work with on custom applications, and I have used them frequently. This is actually my first encounter with Venolia. Venolia has impressed me with the amount of conversation that went on before the pistons were actually manufactured, especially the pin weight and choice. They actually called me and wanted to suggest a lighter pin for the application I was running, being naturally aspirated and somewhat of an endurance engine to run on the street. I was appreciative of the input, I'll probably consider them again once I've seen how these pistons work in the engine. Ross probably has a similiar pin choice, I used the above part # for a basic reference as to dimentions only.



As to the pistons themselves. I actually started by searching ring sets for dimentions that would work for my build. 283/307 Chevrolet ring sets were the closest to what I needed. The ringset chosen was a Total Seal #T1005+.005". The finished bore size was to be 3.880". The 305 Chevy reference, was a bad typo on my part!



I was tickled to find that the 283/307 piston family would be close to my application. This meant that the raw forging I needed was probably a "stocker" item and would only need minor and easy changes to fit the Hudson. The fact that the pin size was within the range of "standard pins" also meant this was a mere tooling choice that the mfg would also have on hand. The Hudson pin size of 0.968" is not in any of the 'standard pin' lists, and would be extra expense in both pins and machining. The slight oversize allowed correction of the Hudson wrist pin bushings, two birds killed with one stone at a savings on the build. The end result was a chevy forging machined to chevy dimentions with the exception of the wrist pin diameter, ring stack spacing from the deck, and wrist pin height.



The exact piston information on the build can be followed up on by contacting Venolia directly, the engineer in charge of the design was Tom Prock @ 1-562-531-8463. The build information would be associated with Crankshaft Specialist job #44247.



These were stroker pistons, so the compression height(wrist pin location) would need to be adjusted according to your own stroke choice. The other odd thing about this piston was the top ring spacing from the piston head. I specified it from a particular distance from the top ring centerline to piston head to allow plenty of clearance for the 7x type relief cut. The distance I specified was 0.665", which is excessive - but I had no idea how deep the finished relief would be, and still don't. This was one of the issues Mr Prock called me back about, and I appreciate the exchange. The finished pistons ended up being different, but still allowing a relief cut up to .375" deep if needed.



So, in conclusion. Assembling all the corrected information and reasoning that went into this piston.



Forging was based upon a 283/307 Chevrolet blank

Rings were chosen for the same engine family, 283/307 Total Seal #T1005+.005"

Wrist pins, (according to John are FE type Ford 390/360/427) Ross reference #975-07-29

Cost from Venolia - $525.00.



The value of finally getting on with the Hudson engine I've always dreamed about?

Priceless.



Mark Hudson