Stock rods were designed and built to go to the grocery store. You can polish and peen the stock rods but you still end up with a part that is made from inferior material and usually has a ton of miles on it.

Lou,

Carrillo makes their rods in San Clemente California. They specialize in custom connecting rods and most of the NASCAR teams use them. K1 rods are designed by me in Michigan. We only use ARP fasteners and the rods are finished in our shop which is also in Michigan but some of the machining is done off shore to keep the cost down. In case you wonder if the rods will of high quality. I am very particular about quality especially when every rod has my name on it. Some of you may also know of Oliver Racing Parts who was the second largest race connecting rod manufacturer in the country (second only to Carrillo). I was one of two people who started Oliver Racing parts. Along with running the company, I designed all of their connecting rods and wrote every CNC program they ever used to make a rod or a crankshaft. I started K1 in 2005 and because of the high quality parts we produce, we were purchased by Dover Industries which is the parent company to Carrillo, JE Pistons and Wiseco Pistons. Dover selects only the best of the best to be part of their company.

Tom

Well... I supose you could use that argument but there are dozens of guys on this site that have been using reconditioned parts for years. I haven't heard of one single rod failure yet (but I am fairly new to the slant stuff), so I guess what I am saying is please try to sell me on the benifits of custom rods versus reconditioned rods.

I understand that you are working on a rod and piston package which is a great idea but I want to know at what levels of power (rpm as 'zilla stated) is all of this needed?

And furthermore, stating that ma mopar used "inferior material" is just wrong Just messing with ya Tom

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Chris'
Autobody
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Stock rods were pretty well over-engineered on a Slant. They are a lot tougher than you'd think.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

I have seen many rod failures, some of which were caused by a bearing failure. But I sure do remember a rod exiting a Procharged slant six Ply Arrow a couple of years ago. I really don't know if that was a rod failure or a bearing failure, but it sure made a mess.

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Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

I have been in the racing parts business for over 27 years and have seen a whole lot of connecting rod failures for a lot of different reasons. Chrysler never intended for any of these rods to be used in high performance applications and yes, by comparison, the metal used is inferior to the metal used for racing applications. The cost difference of using low carbon / low tensile strength steel compared to using 4340 chrome moly steel is fairly small but when you multiply this small difference by the number of rods Chrysler makes, it turns out to be very big money. This is why they design and use rods that will do the job with a small safety factor built in. For those of you who want to keep using factory rods, I say continue on but ask anyone who has ever had a rod failure how much it cost them to repair the engine. If you could break an engine and only do $500 worth of damage, I would say high strength aftermarket rods were a bad investment. A set of aftermarket rods should be looked at as an investment in an insurance policy.

I will try to post a picture of the new rod in the next day or two.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the clarifications and such. Looking forward to rod pics and availability.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Rods under go oscillating stresses as they go thru the 4 stroke cycle. Its actually a pretty wild set of stresses see http://www-mime.eng.utoledo.edu/people/ ... 1-0987.pdf Fig 2 shows that in this analysis, the first stroke is the power stroke (0-180') followed of course by exhaust (180-360'), intake (360-540') & compression (540-720'). Note in Fig 3a. at TDCE/I, the huge "spike" in axial load - the rod, cap and bolts at the lower end are in tension when the crank starts pulling down the piston (and vacuum behind it) for the intake stroke. Remember that "kinetic energy = 1/2 of the mass x velocity squared " or in our case . . . . an engine spinning at 6000 rpm has doubled this axial rod load spike from when it was spinning 4243 rpm.

At TDC before the power stroke, during the same downward motion, the rod is in compression & bending and there's a different load on the bolts and cap.

My understanding has been that rod lower end strength dictates upper rpm limit and beam strength limits ultimate cylinder pressure.

So . . . if you're looking to build power thru rpm, lower end strength is much more important than if your're building power thru 'hose' or forced induction.

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Cheers!
Al T

i know alot of people use the rods from a slant to build stroker motors of all types...i here of some using them in bigblocks the ford fe motors for some kind of build involving a 390 block.

the way i see it, if a rod has alot of miles on it and its still straight after years of service its good to go, especially in a hotter engine.

Did no one read Doc's break down for getting a set of 198 rods and having the preped? It's about 70 bucks cheaper than getting the k1" but at least the k1"s were made to hammer on.

As far as the pistons are conserned, Tom I forgot this part, they are 198 rods so 2.2's "would/will" work but like I said earlier if all we need it piston face changes to get the compression or what not they have a basis to work from.

One last thing, the wife is calling, for those who are all bent about the time frame at which this is happening you could have done something as well. In fact early in this thread I even told someone to go for it(chamber casts) to help. this stuff doesnt happen over night and I am sorry if I dont always have the time to play. AS you see I am here once in a great while but I am still tring to get this going. Just think how the T&D buy flopped, well I working on this because I belive that this is THE coolest deal that anyone/company has done for us here. Well that i know anyway.

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it's like a vw, sounds like a million miles an hour but goes really slow. (for now)

It is not only the bolts and cap that are in tension. The beam is in tension also. While the rod bolts take a terrible beating, take a look at any broken connecting rod. If the bolts are not broke, it is the beam that is pulled in two. At top-dead-center of the exhaust stroke there is no gas pressure load (compression) to push on the piston. The inertia (weight and speed) of the piston causes the piston to try to go through the cylinder head. When the crankshaft tries to pull the piston back down, the beam of the rod sees very high pulling loads. The heavier the piston and wrist pin, the higher the RPM and the longer the stroke the higher this pulling load will be. You could have a pretty flimsy rod beam and still take the loads created by the cylinder pressure. Just for the record, it is not uncommon to see tension (pulling) loads that are almost as high as the compression loads from the power stroke. The difference is in the duration of the load. On the power stroke, the pressure lasts for several degrees of crankshaft rotation while the tension load is a very quick jerk type load that takes place at TDC.

Sorry if I missed it on the previous pages. Is there an ETA?

I was gonna stay out of this, but.............Chamber casting was a waste of time. Slants use flat top pistons, they do not like domes. Pull the head off of 10 Slants at a Slant race and you will see 10 motors with flat top or dished pistons, with 8 different deck heights, and probably 6 different chamber sizes.

This started out as custom rods, people wanted rods, YOU made it a deal for pistons that nobody wanted but you. There are still people on the board who want rods, sell them some.

As for the T&D thing falling apart, YOU didn't even have the money to buy a set, so why should anyone else bail you out? Did you even check with Best Machine about their group buy that only needed 5 sets instead of 10?

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

Your right 'zilla I had to use that money for the rockers to pay my mortgage. In fact I was going to buy them with out anyone's here help. So was I blaming everyone here? no I just was stating that it didn't work the way I had hoped it would have. As far as the castings I brought the idea to Tom when he told me he works with Wiesco. I thought to myself a combo maybe had cheap. So when Tom told me"I need chamber castings." And I wanted pistons, for sure I did what he said because he is doing this for me/us! But as you can see everyone is tiring all sort of BS way to come up with off the deepend pistons from every conceivable engine and do what everyone here ALWAYS does is cobble something together.

So you don't want pistons great don't buy them I'll call Tom and inform him that it seems theres no market for them here. For those who do, you guys need to talk with Tom and get the spec for the rods and give them to whom ever you want your parts from.

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it's like a vw, sounds like a million miles an hour but goes really slow. (for now)

When this all started, I sent Tom an email listing some options and suggested that he make a 7.100 c to c rod to take advantage of the latest 4 banger and V6 pistons available. A 7.1 rod would also separate his product from the factory's 7 inch 198 rod.

I also suggested that he design a matching forged piston to give a 9 - 9.5 compression ratio with an unmilled block & head, then offer the rod / piston set to engine builders who did not want to mess with "doing all the math" to figure-out the right combo. of parts.
With this approach, a little head and block milling could "fine-tune" the final compression ratio and even get you to 10 - 11 to 1 CR with more milling.
Racers / serious engine builders would just buy the 7.1 rods and have their own custom pistons made, much as they do today, except they would have a better con rod to work with.

That is my 2 cents...
DD