....................MG -  Just wondered if having the PV stuck open would wear out the piston and rings sooner due to having an full operational PV.  Like having pressure excessive pressure in the cases and detonating issues.  Just wondering.................

The power valve being stuck open had nothing to do with the piston cracking.  A poorly designed piston is causing the cracking..............(not enough of the right type of alloy in the right places is making these pistons flex and crack).  A solution to these types of failures is not rocket science.  I have talked to Wiseco's engineers about this problem numerous times and they agree.  The engineers said they are often handcuffed by their marketing department.  Wiseco's marking department often instructs their engineering and production departments to make their pistons lighter and lighter as per the request of enthusiast and amature engine builders in the drag racing and ATV racing community.  I think this is the the motto of most marketing departments..........Give them what the want ............not necessarily what is best? ........ The customer is always right!

If the public and marketing department is controlling piston designs, it seem obvious to me by the pistons designs we are getting, that the majority of the enthusiast and the drag racing community does not understand basic metallurgical and engineering principles, yet Wisecos marketing department seems to listens to customers more than their engineers. When a customer reports a problem they want to offer you a free hat, Tee shirt or sell you a replacement piston at dealer cost to pacify you. 

Drag racing is a sport where the majority of the participants and engine builders have a full time day job doing something unrelated to the sport and is just a hobby as well as a hobby and or secondary income for the engine builders.  As a result of their limited understanding of the science that is occurring inside of their engines, they tend to drive thumb tacks with sledgehammers.  This aggressive approach to engine building misses obvious problems that quickly become apparent for engines that have to run many full throttle blasts, that last for more than 10 seconds at a time after the whole engine is up to full operating temperature.   Drag engines and many of their components typically do not have to be designed very well to take the heat and stress for 3 to 10 seconds of high-RPM full throttle and then take a rest and cool down.

A large number of engine builders now have dynos that make a sweep through the usable RPM range in 1 to 5 seconds.  These short dyno runs will not allow many of the poor engine designs or components with heat and or tuning related problems to show their ugly head. 

There must not be enough experienced engine builders that are building engines for road racing, circle track racing, salt flat racing and shifter karts reporting heat and stress related failures for Wiseco to make changes to their pro lite series of pistons.  When I talked to Wiseco they said that they do not have any forging molds in their inventory that would produce pistons with my requested design changes.  It would require 4 new forging molds to be made to incorporate the required design changes for bores 86mm to 89.5mm at a cost of over $7500.00 for each mold. 

Wiseco will build custom pistons for customers (minimum of 4 pistons) using forging molds from their existing inventory of mold.  The custom designed pistons are the typical cookie cutter type conventional piston with the bore size, piston pin size and piston pin location, ring pin location and skirt shape of your choice.  These custom pistons usually experience the flex and collapsing problem associated with the majority of forged pistons that have bores that are larger  than about 55 mm or so.

In the meantime it looks like we have keep changing pistons about as often as we change our underware.  Some guys go longer between changes.