[Formulajones]

I'm not a huge stock pontiac rod fan. Especially as this stuff just keeps getting older and harder to find.

I haven't used a stock rod in a Pontiac build in probably 25 years now. And when I did I had a set of 16 and ended up discarding 4 or 5 of them to get 8 good ones that were even deemed rebuildable. They were resized with ARP bolts and served the purpose well. But these days I ask myself........why use them now? The cost to go through them properly gets you half way there to a decent set of forged rods with a good cap screw bolt.

As far as Eagle rods go, Yes many years ago I had to have some of them resized right out of the box, they weren't "round" enough with the proper crush for the picky machinist I was using at the time. That also was probably at least 20 years ago.
Lately they have actually been pretty good. I recently bought a complete Eagle rotating assembly for another project and sent it to the shop for balancing. Had Mike check the crank and rods over while it was there. He liked what he saw and everything checked out nicely. Not necessary to resize a single rod and the bushed small ends were perfect, didn't need "touched up" as they often do. All clearances were spot on and it all balanced fairly easily.
That was also my experience with a cheaper set of Eagle "sportsman" rods I used in another build about 7-8 years ago with the exception of a light hone on the small end for proper bushing/pin clearance based off the rpm that engine was going to turn. The big ends were perfect.