[steve25]

Your flag out nuts if you use the rubber rods on a great 4 bolt block like a 421!

I would way more trust rebuilt late type cast rods then the early steel rods or even the steel 421 HO rods.

Now if you sent the steel rods out to be Cryo treated after you polished them then that would be a different story.

[Half-Inch Stud]

Originally Posted by steve25

Your flag out nuts if you use the rubber rods on a great 4 bolt block like a 421!

I would way more trust rebuilt late type cast rods then the early steel rods or even the steel 421 HO rods. Now if you sent the steel rods out to be Cryo treated after you polished them then that would be a different story.

The 24 odd Cast rods i have (8 had original bearings in darn-good shape too) are most likely gonna field the 8 candidates. Geez, the original 8 bearings are tempting me to reuse em.

The rubber rods look like a good set, yet not thrilled with the big-end design. not thrilled with belt-sanding & polishing em. The forged TRW pistons had the rubber rods; i pressed em off.

These TRW pins measure 1mil oversize from stock. That makes a big press-force difference. Likely need to hone the Cast rod holes

My last engine had the SD-455 rods (sold the car with engine), so i can live with factory Cast rods, unless i trip over a nice SD-455 set.

[mgarblik]

The cast vs Chinese forged rods debate will likely continue as long as most of that care about Pontiac V-8's are alive. From an engine machinist view, this is what I have experienced. A set of 50+ year old stock cast Pontiac connecting rods will work just fine and not fail if PROPERLY rebuilt with new ARP or SPS connecting rod bolts. I would only use stock rods that don't show any signs of overheating, (black/blue color) or a spun bearing. Also black or blue small ends that would indicate overheating when the pins were installed. A matched set from an old B body engine or a 2 BBL. engine are usually best because they generally haven't had the crap run out of them.
Now, as far as Eagle forged rods or other cheap aftermarket forged rods. They have different issues. No doubt in my mind at least, they are far better material and stronger than the factory Pontiac stuff. BUT, the machining is inconsistent, and unpredictable, period. They MUST be inspected and corrected before use. Buying a set of Eagle rods, taking them out of the box and installing them is NO better than taking a set of rods out of an old junk Pontiac and installing them without inspection/rebuilding them. The results are exactly the same, a failed engine. As I have stated many times, Eagle connecting rods are MUCH better than they were 15 years ago. Back then, 50% of them had to be rebuilt before use. Didn't matter what engine they were designed for. Now the failure rate is 7-10% after 15 years of improvement. I don't mean 7-10% of the engines fail, just 7-10% of them fall outside the factory tolerance for taper, out of round, pin bore specs., or width.
Bottom line is every connecting rod, no matter where it comes from needs to be checked for all it's dimensions no matter what the end use. A quality engine builder like Len Williams surely does this because his reputation depends on the connecting rods staying inside the engine where they belong. Good luck with your build.

[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.

[P@blo]

My last set of the eagle 3D rods were perfect. Light hone on the rod end cost me $30, everything else was spot on. Looks like China has eliminated the QC gap that once existed.