Lots of discussion on an already discussed subject .
Things change over time and folks form opinions from tales told over and over, whether those tales are true or false. A lot of folks shy away from wanting to use factory parts due to hearing the same story about one guy who actually broke a factory part retold thousands of times and being misrepresented as the information being first hand, second hand or even true at all.
I recently listed a 428 in the classified section that was built with a factory crank and SD-455 rods. More than one person was turned off by the cast crank or the "bound to break it you look at them wrong" SD rods. They would rather take their chances with a foreign made, mass produced part that needs to have all the dimensions checked, corrected if needed and then hope it was a good forging. Which most of the time they are. Personally knowing the history of the rods and crankshaft and the intended application I preferred to use the factory parts over the imported parts.
The issue I see nowadays is having an original part reconditioned to be the best it can. We used to send a lot of crankshafts to Crankshaft Specialties. They had an excellent program that would take our good known core and turn it into a top notch competitive part. They are no longer around.
We used to send a lot of rods to a company that did aircraft quality shot peening and within a couple of miles of the shot peen guys was a business that would heat treat our connecting rods and crankshafts. I had a crank guy that had more than forty years experience just grinding cranks. The shot peen company moved, the crank guy retired and the heat treat shop became extremely difficult to deal with.
Lack of convenient services makes the imported race parts more appealing.
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