Hi All
 
Well not a great amount of progress but I thought I would take advantage of the good Aus dollar a few weeks back and splash out on some bits for the engine rebuild. These arrived this week.
Decided on some JE forged 11:1 85.5mm pistons and the suited 5.483" Eagle rods which are used on the Blacktop in the US market. I have the Silvertop but as both variants share the same bore and crank these will provide an improved crank ratio - albeit by a small amount
Pistons look nice with a big dome and large valve reliefs. Rods are H beam items with ARP2000 3/8 rod bolts.

Looks good :)
 
Woz

Paul, Have you done a static compression measurement yet? Not sure what it will be like with your silver top but the advertised ratio compared to reality is quite different....

Hi Mickas
Are you referring to actual compared to advertised?
I can only go on what was the advertised CR with a certain deck height, gasket thickness and combustion chamber volume (see link below - #298718).
http://www.jepistons.com/Catalogs/Sport-Compact/Ford/zx3.aspx
I will have to wait until the engine is stripped etc to calculate deck height etc.
I'm after anything arouns 10.5 - 11:1 CR running on 98 RON fuel.
Does that answer your concerns?

It may be your concern... I think you'll be way over what you are chasing...
I will what to hear when you measure it...

Hmm, now you have me worried!
Can you elaborate please?

The advertised compression was well under what we got when working mine out.
I grabbed the 9.0's as I am going turbo. Turns out I have to run a really thick head gasket to get it down to 9.0.
I can't remember the finer details but I used to have a set of 11.0's which when worked out, it as over 12.0.
Thats the short story....

Ah, OK.
Well the head work may lead to a little being removed from the chambers anyhow so will need to fine tune.
Thanks for the heads up.

No worries. Can't wait for you to get it on the road. 

Paul,
 
If they're over thats no big deal, it's easy to remove some material off them to lower the comp.  Its much harder to go the other way :)
 
Cheers
Woz