depends what youre doin.
Crowers are some of the best rods out there, SUPER beefy, i held them in my hands..awesome rods
As far as pistons go, you can get JE, weisco, ross, crower, pretty much anything, also Childs and Alberts make great stuff, about $450 for pistons and rings i believe. If having your block out for a while is no big deal, than its no problem.
Have the pistons made a bit bigger then stock, take them and block to a good machine shop, have them match the 2.
As far as rods, eagle and crower are both great, eagle is a lot cheaper, but still a great rod.
You also need main caps and bolts, more importantly bolts.
To balance the whole thing, i think you need to have the crank, rods, pistons, crank pulley. I think you only need 1 of the rods and 1 of the pistons too. the balancing is cheep, and will probably run smoother than stock if balanced correctly.
As far as compression, again, it depends on what you wanna do. The lower you go, the more you loose and the engine becomes less responsive.
For boost, even stock compression is fine with proper tuning. 9:1 is great, 8.5:1 is as low as i would go, and thats for heavy boost.
9:1 should be plenty i think.
Tom is runing 400whp right now and i think he has 8.5:1
BTW, to save you the trouble, tom can have you a FULLY built block at your door step for a bit over $2k, a pretty good deal, same block that he is runing 400whp+ on right now, day after day at the track
[ 10-28-2002, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: nazthug ]