The Gen V LT1 engine is capable of producing some serious horsepower. Many shops and individuals have proven this over the last year. Unfortunately, for too many of us, we have found that the stock pistons/rings are the weak link when used in forced induction applications above 700RWHP.

Over the course of the past twelve months we have had five Stingrays from other shops across the country as well as one of our own customers experience an engine failure due to the OE pistons. Often times piston failure is directly related to detonation, but after inspecting several of these engines for signs of detonation and not finding any and seeing the same areas breaking on the pistons it was obvious the piston simply cannot take the cylinder pressure.

With the Gen V LT1 engine requiring cylinder head removal as well as oil pan removal for our Gen V Cam Kit, we decided this would be a perfect opportunity to replace the pistons to ensure an increased level of reliability in our builds. The next step was to design a forged piston that is not only stronger than the OE piston, but also one that could be used as a direct drop in with no balancing/machining.

Vengeance Racing is proud to offer fully forged direct replacement pistons for your Gen V LT1!!!! After working with our friends at Wiseco for several months we have received our first production set and will be installing these early next week.

Features:

*DIRECT REPLACEMENT Fully forged pistons
*EXACT weight as OE piston- No balancing of rotating assembly
*Heavy Duty Tool steel pins
*File Fit Ring Pacj=k
*Coated Skirts (On all future orders)

Exclusively available from Vengeance Racing!!

















Pricing for pistons/pins/rings will be $1199.99

Vengeance Racing will offer:

Complete piston set
File Fitting Rings
New Rod Bolts
Labor/Installation

for $2399.00 when installing any of our performance packages that include our Gen V custom cam kit on any C7!!!!

 

Very cool! Im guessing Im one of the five. Same CR?

 

Looks good Ron!! Can't wait til the fall..

 

Awesome Ron!

My brother and I just put a deposit on these yesterday. See you soon for the install.

 

Pretty set of slugs.

 

Very nice!!

 

Those Bad Boys are going in my car first at 10lbs of boost my rings and pistons blew at base line on the dyno I drove up from Florida to get the car, as I arrive 10 minutes earlier she blew so I drove home, Ron and team called Weisco now I will have forged units in a stock block, Vengeance did heads and cam on a auto on 14lbs of boost hoping for 1000 HP way to go Vengeance Racing!

 

I assume the Connecting rods are holding up pretty well from what you guys have seen? Don't the LT1 and LT4 use the same forged powder metal rods or are they in fact different? Trying to determine if there is any benefit to looking into stronger rods while you are already in there..

 

Interested. Do they retain the same CR or lower it (if so, to how much)?

 

Love it Ron, I can honestly say we have received between 10-15 C7s from other shops with broke pistons. In some cases, the customers did not even know their pistons were broke. Of course every case is different and we have received plenty that "knew" their car had problems. With the way "some" of them came in, the rings were still in tact. This allowed that cylinder to still hold some compression, but will be down compared to others. The car will still run and even looking at the pistons with a bore scope they would appear to be fine. Not until you fully drop the Piston/Rod out of the hole you wont even know the piston is broke. Once you drop it out of the hole you will see the pieces of piston start falling out(always a bad sign).

Tuning these new Direct Injection engines is completely different to past LS engines and you must be very careful with every build. This is why I try and explain to people to please research who you are sending your car to for performance upgrades. There are a lot of shops that will do the work for "cheap" to get the business, but they may have little to no experience with these new platforms.

Keep up the nice work Ron. We have been doing some great R&D work to ensure our packages perform as well as maintain great reliability.


Steven Fereday

 

Looks good guys! What will be a "safe" number with these pistons? I know there's tons of variables but we know above 700 the envelope is pushed so we need to upgrade pistons. What do you believe the new number will be? If doing a cam upgrade at the same time what would be the cost of install?

Thanks, Dan

 

I'm assuming a cam only car doesn't need these just if they are supercharged and cam'd.

 

Call me crazy but for $2400 I am assuming you're leaving the motor in the car to install these only when you're doing a H/C job? Or are you pulling the motor? Just curious really.

That's actually a pretty damn good price for the insurance.

 

very cool i am pretty sure i need a set lol. do you now what bore the rings accomodate? +005 or?

 

Ron are you guys trying this swap without honing the block?

 

I'd also like to know the compression and how they compare to a factory z piston

 

Thanks for all of the interest guys. To answer your questions ....

Our pistons are designed to retain stock compression ratio. We have not seen an issue with the stock compression/direct injection combination. in testing upward of 14/16psi. The issue is simply with the design/strength of the OE piston. As Steven from LMR mentioned and I pictured above, these pistons are failing and not providing any indication. The top of the piston pictured above looks perfectly fine, yet had 96% leak down when tested.

You would not be able to use an aftermarket rod as you would be changing the weight and would require balancing of the rotating assembly. Our pistons were designed to the exact weight of the OE pistons with strength in all of the right areas including the pin itself.

Each customer that has these pistons installed at Vengeance Racing will have their block honed to ensure proper seating of the rings.

We will take pictures of Trans C7 install as we make progress later this week.

 

Nice work guys!!

 

i dunno whats up with these or other drop in or low comp. replacements but i'm tired of waiting with money in hand waiving it around..

 

Not sure what you have been dealing with, but we have two sets left in stock ready for immediate shipment. $1199.99 plus shipping including pins/file fit rings. Give us a call.