[ponyakr]

as best i can recall at this moment--when i bought my goat in the spring of '69, i had never seen a pontiac piston. after racin that car thru the '73-'74 seasons, i had still never seen a pontiac piston--the heads & intake had never been off. when i decided 2 rig that car & a 68 bird up 2 run nhra stock elim competitively, i didn't have a second 400 2 build for the bird. so i decided 2 kill 2 birds with 1 stone. so i borrowed my dads truck & me & a local chevy racer(ys) went 2 big d & checked out some big area junkyards. found & bought a complete 400 with the chrome vc & q-jet still on it. also bought a good muncie 4-speed. that second bird that was killed on this trip was 2 stop in terrel & pick up 35 cases of coors on the way back home. we stashed them in ys's shop. the nhra rule book said factory gm pistons only--but as i've mentioned, gm was out at the time. now, at this point, my total ignorance & lack of experience surfaced again. if i could go back & do it now, i'd just order trw forged replacement pistons--since they were never checked. but i knew the stock pistons were cast-- so the closest thing(in my mind) was napa cast replacements--which were not up 2 the task of drag racin. so i suppose the napas were the 1st pistons i ever saw that would fit a pontiac. after i got the bird on the track, gm got their new batch of pistons--so i bought a set & took em 2 the machine shop. that was the 1st gm pontiac piston i ever saw. after that, trw forged were the best pistons i ever bought. never bought any ross, venolia, etc. hi dollar stuff. i did have a machine shop cut a set of trw's for locks for the roller motor in 76. they either did it wrong or used bad snap ring locks, cause 1 came out imediately & messed up a cylinder wall. they had 2 install a sleeve, which they botched--well i won't go there again rite now. from that time on, i used nothing but press on, forged, trw flat tops. plenty good for hi 11-12 sec bracket motors. but with the current price of trw's(or whatever they are called now) crowding $400, there are probably better values out there. maybe KB or? never used 1 of the hyper-whatever type pistons so i can't comment on those. if you got plenty of $--don't give it another thought--buy ross like you want em & lite pins--why not?