Just thought id share my experience with JE Pistons. Background: I was running 10psi with my PE kit, had a good tune and the motor was completley built minus sleeves. The compression was 10.5:1. About 2 months ago after we finally had the car running well for about a month we took it to VIR for some track time. It ran awesome the car was really strong (we had 100 octane in for saftey). After the last run of the day i parked the car to let i cool down before we were going to leave. after about a half hour or so we started the car back up and we had a bad ticking sound coming from the motor. At the time we didnt know what it was but we were worried so we got a friend of ours to trailer the car back. When we got the car back to the shop we tried to figure out what it was and we checked and eliminated every possibility except for an internal problem. So about a month ago we gave them the word to pull the motor apart. We found out that one of the piston skirts had cracked off. we then looked at the other pistons and realized that all 6 of them had severe cracks on them in the exact same spots. We talked to JE and it seems like this might be a common problem because they new exacrlt where it cracked and were not suprised at all. So now almost 2 and a half months later i finally get my Z back with some new good pistons hopefuly and lower compresion (arias extreme duty 9:1). so far im still breaking the mothor in but everything seem to be going good and now ill finally be able to see how much this hp PE kit can really make . well anyways i thought i would just share some pics of the piston that had the skirt fall off (i tried to take pics of the cracks on the ones still together but they didnt come out well).

 

damnit, my built motor has got JE's. What did JE do for you?

 

nothing but we didnt pursue it much


the pistons i had were some of the first they produced for a Z... it was before they even offered low compression pistons so it might have been an old design problem but i dont know. hopefully u wont have any problems.

 

why? It had to cost a pretty penny to fix their problem

 

no way to prove it was their fault.

 

Supposidly JE isn't the company it used to be. From what I hear the best guys from JE went to start CP pistons. CP has all the best new machines with tons of experience they currently make the best. Hard to go with JE when the company that made them what they are aren't there anymore. Also from what I can see it doesn't look like their skirt design is that great. Are cars put excessive stress on the skirts. Hence why the stock pistons have coating stock on the skirts and if you pull them out after 10,000 miles its like already worn down.

 

JE dont have a good rep in the sports compact world. I have been many a cracked or toasted JE piston. Quality is always an issue. Stick with the good brands. Wiesco, CP, Arias, Ross etc.

 

woah...sorry to hear about your luck...let us know if we can help...

-TODD

 

I've run JE's for a while... never had a problem.. That skirt failure is pretty odd, though.

 

Kurt
sorry to hear about all this. It sucks, i know the feeling. Let me know if I can help in any way.

 

thanks

 

thanks gurgen i really appreciate all the help youve given but i think were good now.

Also thanks for the water cooling instructions we went ahead and installed those while the motor was out.

 

to add though, JE told us on the phone they dont recommend over 16psi on pump fuel. the heat is just too much.

Secondly, were u using lightweight NA pistons? They look fairly flimsy.

 

well when the pistons went bad we were only on 10 psi, a conservative tune and 100 octane. The pistons are for a boosted car and yea they do seem pretty flimsey espeacialy copmpared to the new arias estreme duty pistons that we put in. they werent that much lighter either.

 

Sorry to read of your experience but at least now you have stronger pistons in there.

 

im almost positive i had the same issue with cp pistons but on my way to the shop the piston came apart. found chunks of it.

 

KTaylor, thanks for the informaton sharing, sorry about your luck, glad you are up.

 

uhoh... i'm planning on installing some 9.5:1 JE pistons in a few weeks..

 

That sucks what compression pistons were you running? what are u running now?

 

Question for you-why did you decide to boost pistons with a slightly higher compression than stock? Why not 9:1 or 9.5:1 if you wanted to keep it close to stock? Im not grilling you Im just curious...