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I'm not a knowledgeable as Dawg, but my take is the bushingless cam plate isn't a biggie as replacing it is easy and fairly cheap. Most of the ricers have been running their engines in cars and bikes like this for at least 30 years. The bushingless rods could be a problem IF the piston pins free float in the rods. If you beat a wrist pin bore out in the rod without a bushing, it's a fairly involved process to bore the rod, install a bushing and hone to size all while keeping everything straight. It'd probably be as cheap to replace the crank. If the rods are a press fit wrist pin setup, it'll be a PITA at rebuild time. (special tooling to remove the pistons) Both setups will be reliable, but the rub comes at rebuild time or when an engine goes south. I think I'll just keep my 09!
Lack of babbit material on the camplate has me very concerned. They finally got the cam drive to a place where it has been performing well, and then they mess with it again. Hopefully the SE billet camplate will be adaptable to the 2011.
The conrods......well. Maybe they may have found a way to let a hardened piston pin float in the conrod small-end with oil properly providing the tolerance. It's been done before in automotive, like the HP small block chevy's.
If they went press-pin on the piston, that would be a complete shame.
I am not impressed with a floating piston pin in a non-bushed bore. Maybe the MOCO did a lot of testing and did not notice any improvement by using a bushing. Seems like we are going backwards on progress instead of advancing. Same thing goes for the cam plate. Plus this makes both parts just throw away items with no rebuilding involved (this part does not surprise me as everything else has gone down this road. i.e. tv's, washers, refrigerators, etc.).
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