Well, as some of you know I had to pull my motor because I could not get to the back valves to change the valvesprings/retainers for my blower cams. The motor is sitting in my garage and I was going to just rip the heads off, get them ported and polished and slap the cams in and call it a day. Now I'm expecting to be in the 450rwhp/450tq range through stock internals. I originally didnt want to start forging out my whole motor because I know it can be super expensive and a lot more time consuming and it probably wouldnt be up and running come the spring time. But while the motor is sitting out on a stand, the more i think about it, it may just make sense to do it right the first time than to do all this work to my car and still have the risk of damaging the motor at such a high hp level for stock internals. this car isn't going to be a super fast track car or anything, honestly I probably wouldn't even want to go more than mid 500rwhp for a street warrior.
1) Do I need to forge my rods/crank/pistons or can i get away with just forging some of these?
2) any good/cost effective kits out there from companies for forged internals?
3) what companies would you guys recommend?

thanks

 

Manley makes the rods, as well as Eagle. The Manley versions are OEM on terminators.

For cranks, the stock Cobra one would be the cheapest, just that will require an 8-bolt flywheel/flexplate.

For pistons, Mahle or Federal-Mogul (Speed-Pro) have forged pistons. Eagle may also.

As for what to forge, if you want to leave something out, make it the crank, as the is the strongest of the weakest links.

 

after talking to a bunch of people i came to the decision that i am going to forge my rods/pistons and leave my stock crank.

i found a set of brand new eagle esp h beam rods with arp bolts and lube a guy is selling for $500 shipped so i think i'm going to hop on that.