egge pistons

I ment kanter and egge, spell check got it. Also were there 2 different compression ratio pistons offered for 290's?

I have Egge pistons on my 327. I've put around 4,500 miles on the engine since the rebuilt.  Haven't had any problems. I'm not racing it mind you, but I do let her stretch her legs a bit on the highway.

Nothing wrong with the cast pistons but they are only available in slightly under stock compression.  If you re-use the originals, make sure there is no or only minimal(.002) ridge at the top of the cylinder.  Pay ver close attention to 8, as that one runs the hottest and typically sees the most wear.  If you run new rings they will smack against this ridge and pop the top land off the piston.  I have honed out this ridge before and run new rings.  But the engine I'm working on now has too much ridge in just that one cylinder to be safe.  I'm going to bore this one and use new pistons.  If the ridge is minimal you may be o.k.  Providing it can be removed.  You re-ring will not last very long though,  maybe 40-50,000 miles at best.   Why are you rebuilding it and what is the mileage on it?

With new pistons and rings you will almost certainly hit the ridge.  Thats a lot of metal to try to remove with a hone.  You may be able to get a machine shop to hone the ridge off with a rigid hone but the pistons are going to be real loose.  Around here a bore and hone job is about $125.00 and the tanking of the block would be anothe $75.00 or so.  You should be able to get the bare minimum machine work done for around $250.00 total without the heads.  You should be able to get stock pistons from Autozone for around $200.00 and another $50.00 for the rings.  You may be better off getting a master kit off the internet for around $400.00 that includes all the hard parts.  The one I'm doing now will cost me about $1000.00 total and I had most of gaskets and timing parts on hand.  A very cheap and quick re-ring may be a thing of the past. 

The problem is that there was never much demand for 290 parts.  Even back in the day, Most would never bother building a 290 when a 343 or 390 was a bolt in swap.