Engine rebuilding questions?

[BBBrad]

Ok people, time to give the 3s a birthday. I have rebuilt engines before and never had any probs, but always just a standard type rebuild. This wll be a bigger project with upto 20psi and 400hp targets.
I got some new .5mm oversized forged pistons coming. They come with rings and pins. Im going to fit them to the standard rods. Im going to use all toyota bearings and gaskets, but I just got a few tech questions.
Is this the correct way of going about things?
1-I want to get the engine balanced. I have been told this involves the crank pulley, crank,and flywheel being balanced together by the pros.
2-The rods are to be shotpeened and linished, also to be evenly weighted as close together as possible.
3-Are arp big end studs availible for the 3s? Where and how much?
4-New toyota head bolts (stretchbolts) to be used. Is there an advantage to using arp headstuds instead of the toyota items? And when they say head studs, do they mean "studs" (with nuts?) Where and how much?
Any info on the above will be a great help. Thanks.
Brad.

[Lloyd]

As far as balancing goes, give them the pistons, rods, crank and flywheel and that should be about all you need done.

[Malcolm]

already posted this on mr2oc, but here it is again...

3 - yes they are
4 - standard bolts have been known to stretch on high boost applications and cause head gasket leaking, infact have you seen that black, widebody sw20 with 600hp+ that was in NZPC? The new owner lives a couple of houses down from me, and exactly that happened on his motor.
ARP studs are around the same cost as stock Toyota ones. And yes they really are studs, thread them into the block, drop head on and put nuts on. Apparently it's a tight fit trying to get a socket onto the nut with the cams on the head though.
Anyway, these guys do pretty good deals on such parts for 3SGTE's, and here are their ARP bits....
http://935motorsports.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=41_45
they also have some cheap 720cc/min side feed njectors and a few other excellent goodies (cheap walbro pumps etc).
if you decide to get some bits from them then let me know and maybe we can split postage cause I'd like to get some head studs and rod bolts from them too

[BBBrad]

Sounds like a plan. See my reply at the mr2oc. Worthwhile getting main arp studs too??

[Malcolm]

not sure about the mains, it would seem to make sense to do everything, rather than just 60% of the hardware, but the headstuds are definitely worthwhile, and the rod bolts are cheap as, whereas the mains are the same price as head studs, but I've never heard of people having probs with stretched main bolts...

[THA SHZ]

or try segedins for those bolts , they generally stock all of them

[MrBob]

I'd like to get some head studs and rod bolts from them too

The rod bolts they list for the 3sgte are actually slightly to short. I used the full range of arp bolts and studs on my engine (except the flywheel bolts). All the rest were fine.
Incidently, they list the same rod bolts for a 22R.

[Malcolm]

so what did you do? get longer ones from another car or something?

[MrBob]

na, got the rods machined to take em

[Malcolm]

sorry matt, I'm a bit confused as to how you would machine the rods to make bolts which are too short fit? Did you get the bearing caps milled down on the seating points for the bolts?

[MrBob]

Did you get the bearing caps milled down on the seating points for the bolts?

yeah, just got the recess taken ever so slightly so the bolts seat in further.