[SimplyMuscle]

I recently purchased a car with a 383 stroker engine. The car was not running right so I did some tests and determined it was a bad piston. After removing the heads I saw that two of the pistons were damaged. The other pistons have no problems. Would I be able to replace those two damaged pistons or do I have to replace all 8 of them?

[DoubleVision]

Depends on what shape the others are in. I would also try and find the root cause of why the 2 pistons are damaged. if you just replace 2 you`ll have to carefully rehone the 2 cylinders and make sure you use plenty of lube like WD40 to keep the hone dust down. then afterwards clean the 2 cylinders and clean them until you can`t get any gray color on a paper towel. Then I would use carb spray to clean the bottom end of the engine good to try and clean everywhere else before I reassembled.

[carsavvycook]

You could replace just the 2 pistons, but make sure you get the same brand. Which 2 pistons did it take out?

[Centerline]

There are two ways to look at this problem. One is to determine the root cause and fix that then just replace the two bad pistons. This is the cheap way out, however to do it right the pistons must be from the same manufacturer and have the piston/rod combination weighed and have the weight matched to the units that were removed. This is the "poor man's" method of not ruining your engine by running it out of balance.

The right way to do this is to fix the root cause and then replace the entire set of pistons. Because your engine is a stroker it is important to have the rotating assembly properly balanced. The method mentioned above will work but isn't perfect and still may create some vibrations. Replacing the entire set of pistons and having the rotating assembly balanced is the only "correct" way to ensure longevity and reliability.

[JAKE 68 GMC]

I'd probably replace all 8 pistons just to be on the safe side. Pistons don't cost that much, and if you put them in there you know exactly what you have for an engine