[SEL] Friend piston questions

[Michael Tucker]

Howdy all,

Lincoln is restoring a 4 hp Friend Model BX (throttle governed) and 
he needs some help with it.  Long story, but the piston is DEAD, as 
in using it is totally out of the question.  So, he is in search of a 
replacement piston.  The diameter is 4 inches and the distance from 
the top of the piston to the top of the wrist pin hole is 1.45 
inches.  The diameter of the wrist pin hole is a little more than 
0.75 inches.

Does anybody know of a piston that we could make work for this 
engine?  There are a number of automobile pistons that are 4 inches 
but the ones that we have found all have a very narrow space for the 
connecting rod and making that space big enough to accept the rod 
would remove too much material and make things a little too fragile 
for the wrist pin.  We would rather not grind down the width of the 
connecting rod down to fit because one of these days we may actually 
run across a correct Friend piston.

According to Ed at Hit & Miss, an IHC LB 3-5 piston is 4 inches with 
a wrist pin hole that would work but the distance from the top of the 
piston to the top of the wrist pin is close to 2 inches.  Would an 
extra 0.5 inches of compression stroke be too much for a headless 
engine to handle?

Thanks for the help,
Mike
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Michael Tucker
Midway, Kentucky, USA
mtucker at uky.edu
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