Lost a valve guide in my 462, and when I tore it down also found I was losing a cam lobe. Caught it early, but still required a complete teardown. Motor had been in service for 2.5 years, maybe 5000 miles and 500-600 1/4 passes, actually ran great but had a valve train noise.... I'm in the process of re-assembly, and was checking rod bearing clearances tonight and was getting some wonky bolt stretch readings. Checked closer and found that not all my rod caps had adequate chamfer for the ARP nuts to seat without interference. I know this, my Machinist knows this. I didnt catch it on 1st assembly, but there it was . Lucky I didnt throw a rod at 5500, real lucky. Guess the moral of the story is no matter how good anyone is, mistakes get made. Be vigilant, double check everything!!
Luck you did not snap a bolt! This can happen at any machine shop. Things like toquing up bolts are left to the understudies so to speak and many times there not up on the details to look for. For a shop to stay in business these days the top notch guy in the shop can't do everything. If your getting parts back and doing any assembling yourself , then to me your responsibile for the final detail checks! Another detail with rod bolts even in just a street motor is that if they are going on there 5th time of being torqued up then they should be replaced. They can only be stretched so many times before they will drop off there preload ability, and the only way to keep track of this is by measuring for stretch .
yeah theyre gonna have to be replaced. I was torquing to 65 lbs and one would stretch 5 thou, the other would stretch 7, and thats why I started asking questions in the first place. not to mention they've been side loaded to some extent now. just dont like what I'm seeing. You bring up an excellent point on the duty of an assembler. The machinist is nothing but a machine, so to speak. Yeah, he should know his job but it's up to me to know if he did what I wanted, what I asked. And I've learned over the last couple engines that they need super clear direction, they can do anything you ask but did you ask for the right thing the right way? And as good a machinist as someone is, they may not be a good assembler (or think like an assembler). Two very different skillsets.
Reason number 432 to stop using stock rods.. Sure they will hold up, but should be set aside for most applications, for the same reason I stopped using stock timing covers.. there simply is a much better option out there. It never fails to amaze me that guys will spend upwards of $700 bucks on a timing cover, but won't spend half that to upgrade their connecting rods. Hey stock timing covers worked for years too... Molnar's Buick specific rod alternative are light years better. And with machine shop labor rates always on the rise, the actual cost difference to use a tremendously superior rod is less than you might think. I have heard of shops out on the coasts charging upwards of $300 to re size the easy Chevy rods.. add a set of $100 bolts, plus the labor charges to relieve the caps for the nuts, and then fool around with trying to balance them.. does not make much sense anymore. I generally only quote reconditioning stock rods if I know that Molnar is out of stock on the rod I need, and they also have our stock rod in the desirable .990 pin size. There is a whole world of pin choices for the 2.930 long .990 pin, as opposed to just a few for the 1" pin that Buick used. Tom Molnar has changed the game here with Buick specific stroker rods for the 470 and 482 that were built out of a conversation I was having with him where I mentioned we were using BBC rods for the 470 combo.. and if you wanted to build a 482, hello big buck custom rods. His question was "would you like a correct offset Buick rod for your Strokers?" Yes please.. JW
And my next one will have em! These rods came together pretty easy, sized well and didnt have much twist so we figured we'd use them . maybe half have the correct chamfer, but somehow the other half never got touched. and in that "bad" half, most were so close you'd never know or feel it, but a couple rods were soooo far off it was dangerous. I dont even want to mention I'm using a stock frt cover too!
