186 / 202 pistons

[inchyeh]

I know the red 186 and 202 have the same bore but can you use 202 pistons in a 186 with its shorter stroke?
I'm rebuilding my 186 with a CRS blower and am starting to think about crank, rod and piston combos.
I'll be using a blue/black 202 12 port head and modifying the water jacket holes in the block. I'm not looking for huge H.P. just enough to punt my EH a bit harder. I've tried other forums but i find this one has more real information and less of the d***head factor.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Addo]

If I remember rightly the gudgeon on the 202's are positioned higher on the piston which would make them uncompatable with the 186 stroke.
I was once told that was why 202's were prone to shearing off pistons in the early days??
Some one can correct me if wrong but that was my understanding of it.
With a bit of machining you can put a blue motor counterbalanced crank in a red 202. I wonder if the same would fit in a 186 to stroke it up for extra compression and cubes. One of the racing red guru's might know.
Addo.

[inchyeh]

Thanks Addo,
I forgot about the pins.
I'm still having trouble finding new performance parts for a 186,  it seems this venerable block has dropped off the performance radar.
Any suggestions for suitable pistons for a low boost (8-9 psi) blower??

[fccool59]

I am using acl race series dished pistons, the engine shop also machined a bit more of the top and black motor rods wich I had shot peened, closed and honed I have a 179 block with a machined black crank (not real cheap)

[inchyeh]

I was looking at the ACL pistons but their web site doesn't list any for a 186. That's why I was curious about the 202 pistons.
If I could pick a black 202 that would give me the head, crank and rods. The head is still a 12 port on the black motors?

At last real advise!

[fccool59]

yeah, thats rite, the pistons I have are 202, its bored and has a 3.3 crank.
I raided a efi 3.3 at the wreckers but would have been better of buying a complete motor and pulling all the bits out in the luxury of my own front yard, the cost of these parts was small compared to what was done with them.
The sc14 will give a good power increase but is more suited to near stock motors, It is the easiest supercharger to fit and cheap to replace but hard to get strong reliable boost out of, thats why I am now trying to do it with a eaton m90.
The changes to my head and cam kind of made the engine too much for the smaller sc14 blower. these can be set up stock with just a decompression plate, the extra machining  in the pistons and cc'd chambers can take more boost than the sc14 can make.
I might be selling the sc14 supercharger and vk efi manifold if all goes well with the m90.
much better results have been found on sc14 set ups using the vk efi manifold than the 2bbl manifold like in the crs kit but you need to trim the firewall and relocate the battery to fit it to a FC.

[fccool59]

where are you, my shop kind of just knew what fitted where and bought the bits, they are in cambletown, nsw and have done alot of the machining on many of the holden 6 fed's, and turbo and supercharged holden 6's.

[inchyeh]

I'm in Temora, central NSW.

I was thinking the 2bbl manifold would be extremely inefficient and the efi manifold is obviously a better design. I was toying with the idea of making my own inlet manifold based on the design of the VK EFI.

My 186 is already +.060. I'm not looking for really high boost and hp figures just a good strong torquey motor that will be fun to drive. I know the sc14 setup is for a generally stock motor but as you said it's easy to setup.

Do you run the EFI or just use the manifold?

[inchyeh]

When you prepped the block for the black head did you fill the extra water galleries? I've heard some people rely on the head gasket to block them off but this seems a bit risky.

I'll probably end up getting the machining, etc. done in Wagga so if anyone knows of a good shop there I'd love the heads up.

My ideas for my final driveline setup are:
Black 202 head (cleaned up but stock except for LPG valves, seats and guides)
Black 202 crank, rods
ACL pistons
SC14 blower
Gas Reasearch LPG carby and cam
Custom headers with 2.5" single system
Aussie 4 speed (a bit of weak link so we'll see)
Salisbury diff (shortened and with discs)

Any comments /  suggestions?

[minifcvan]

hi mate ,im in junee.. you can try INGRAMS in wagga for your motor work...phone 0269251911   or http://www.ingramsauto.com.au or p&p performance on 0269251982 for the gas give this guy a go he does all the work on my ute with gas wagga city auto centre 0269255755 cheers mark p.s will be going the rod show next month at temora??

[inchyeh]

Thanks Mark,
That gives me some contacts to start with. P&P did some work on my EH for the first rebuild 16 yrs ago!

I'll definitely be going to the Rod show. I've had it marked on the calendar for weeks. Plan to take the camera and notepad and get as many ideas as I can.

Can I just say I have got more info from this forum in a couple of days than I have from others in months. Thanks to the moderators and contributors.