'68 Barracuda project

HemiEd said
Wow, that is a very nice car to start with! Are you the one that has done all the body prep work?

No, that is how i picked it up. I will be sandblasting this thing down to bare metal to make sure there is no rust hiding anywhere.

HemiEd said
The 440s rods statement makes no sense to me, but I am easily confused. That would set the pin up higher in the piston requiring a special piston.

Are you saying that reducing the piston skirt that much will make up for the additional rod weight? That piston picture looks very similar to the Ross pistons I had in my alky injected 440.

The 440 rods are longer than the 383 rods. So I needed to get custom pistons made with a shorter compression height. I weighed the stock piston/ pin, rings and connecting rod and compared them to the custom piston, pin, rings and connecting rod and it came out to just over 1 lbs lighter than the stock components.

The stock 383 piston compression height is about 1.908" I think. My pistons compression height is 1.493". Plus I have the 1/16", 1/16", and 3/16" rings. So more weight savings and less friction compared to the stock ones.