Damian

iTrader: (89)

That's because anybody who does this for a living isn't going to use that garbage on Ebay.

6SnakeEyes9

Most of you might be to young to remember, but I can remember when the exact same questions were being asked about eagle rods... People were using "pink" rods cause those eagle rods were Chinese junk! I have seen a brand new Manley rod let go due to a casting flaw, and I have seen guys run stock rods to RPM's untold for long periods of time... It's a crap shoot

kdavis

iTrader: (14)

I say someone order a set and send them to a vendor for a side by side comparison vs preferred brands such as eagle, scat, compstar, etc.

Callies Performance

I will put them in QC no problem

Damian

iTrader: (89)

While that is true and I see where you're going, Ebay stuff has a pretty high failure rate. Those "regrind" cams they sell on there for $185 fall apart in motors all the time because the metal isn't hardened properly.

Maybe for a "junk yard" style setup where you're just trying to get something together as cheap as possible they might fit the bill. But if somebody is spending a bunch of money putting a nice shortblock together, questionable ebay parts isn't the way to go.

aarontracy

iTrader: (17)

i've never used these so my post might be worthless to you but I had a buddy order some Summit brand rear end gears cause they seemed the same as the $$$ gears. We completely destroyed the ring on the 1st launch (cam only + spray). The outside of the gear looked good, nice and solid, the inside was the problem, it seemed soft and had obviously not been through the same heat treating process.

We learned our lesson the hard way but then again i would rather change out a set of gears than trash a motor.

armyboyatc

iTrader: (29)

How about everyone that is interested put in money and each person pay for 1 rod and send it to callies and have them test them. I would be down to throw 32 bucks in the pot. 7 more people. It would be worth 32 bucks just to see. They may be good for a standard rebuild at least. Just a little bit stronger than stock would do a lot of people on a tight budget really nice for 200 bucks.

3timeracin

iTrader: (15)

If you look close all the 434 H beams are NEARLY identical I have been with placeS like west tech the IROC series in NJ and many others over the years and China as bad as it is has always been a leader in metal production and cheaper too. Every company looks at the bottom line they are business after all. Eagle is a chinese rods machined here with several years of good experiences with there parts. same for scat and places like PBM and probe all import but people run them. I found its 50/50 I have delt with Sue at Wiseco for 18 years great person to deal with then I deal with another person at (A company I will not disclose) for rods that they sell for $1600 a set and they are complete asses because they say they are the best rods ? after this shitty experience we started a 89 engine experiment took nearly 5 years testing various parts. Heres what I came out with and yes you get what you pay for, but is it worth paying $120 to eagle for ARP2000 bolts when you can find a place who sells them for $60 or when a company sells a rod ready to run because its been cleaned 5 times in the machining process is that worth $500 more ? I will be tottally honest and ussually i lay low on here, But I see more broken Oliver rods than Eagle and most failures are tune related, detonation etc... because a rods is cheap does not mean its no good Star galaxy sells the rods directly from china, but if you buy the same rod from scat also chinese its $175 more is it better ? or forgings for Lunati ya they are chinese forgings it must be some machining that makes them $1,600 almost $1,400 more. I have ran over 100 sets of the billet rods with 1 bolt failure and our test engine for the import billet rods was from a turbo outlaw mustang with an LSX that holds alot of records and made numerous 7 second and 6 second passes with $300 rods. The biggest thing I found is attention to detail on anything you most certainly lose something when price is low and I have found many burrs, dirty threads, dings and dents and rust. But I have found all that on THE $1600 RODS TOO JUST ALOT LESS OFTEN.

3timeracin

iTrader: (15)

There is places that test this stuff we did this testing at west tech. More money is paid buy bigger companies to advertise there items instead.

fbodygod

iTrader: (2)

very interested subscribing

racer7088

The much cheaper chinese direct stuff ususally does not have the same finish quality as far as big and small end sizing tolerances and thread finishing etc. Also many of these sets say weight matched and are far off in weight having had plenty of these deals sent to us direct by customers.

Some we had to spend a lot to fix them and some we had to throw away or the customer put them back on Ebay for the next sucker and it was a lesson learned. Of course some were perfectly nice and we used them on the engines in question mostly of course budget builds anyway and they ran fine.

When you pay more for Callies or Eagle etc. it is because there is a company here standing behind them and you rarely get any surprises or mismatched out of tolerance parts. If you really check clearances and your parts for real you already know about a lot of the ebay crap.

There's new ecrap every month or two and most of it is pure ghetto with no quality control at all which is also why it's mucho cheaper and it's sold to people that usually can't or don't know the difference until it's too late.

racer7088

FWIW it's worth I have not used that exact Ecrap part but I have seen about 100 different weird Ecrap rods like these and some were not that bad like I said while others were something out of the black lagoon. We've even had BBC rods in a box with a picture of a sunflower on them that said "flower rods stronger than treetrunk"! They were actually from China and weighed 900g! The picture was an H-Beam and the rods that were in there were I-Beams that sort of looked like a Lunati Pro Mod rod ripoff and were not that bad. Who knows what they really were or where they came from , maybe outer space??? They were super heavy though and had a weird rod bolt in them that I have never seen. The box was very fancy and the flower picture was in color.

nghisus

Read their return policy carefully.

Returns
At Engine Kits we try very hard to ship all orders as promptly as possible and as described. If you receive a incorrect part please email ASAP so we can take care of it.NO RETURNS AFTER 7 DAYS OF RECEIPT [EXCEPT FOR A INCORRECT PART BEING SHIPPED],EXCHANGES CAN BE MADE UP TO 15 DAYS OF RECEIPT.Do not return any part or kit without emailing us for Instructions on how to ship. We will send you a RGA # to return your part by E bay email. Please enclose a copy of your receipt in the box.Do not send your original receipt. All return parts that are shipped correctly and you want to return are subject to a 25% restocking Fee (Freight is not refundable) and must be in the unopened box and in original condition.NOTE; NO RETURN ON BALANCED ASSEMBLIES.

racer7088

Hahahaha so if you open the box you already can't return the rods?

slowride

iTrader: (3)

Friend at work runs them in his 500+ ci big block mopar with no problems for years. Who knows which supplier they were from, but they look like most of the h-beams. Make sure they are true and the bore clearance is good and it probably won't be an issue at all.

You guys got it easy. People sell rods like these for $800+ for Audi s4 engines (2.7 tt v6) Ebay vendors still want $600 for them and this is for 6 rods

malibutwins

iTrader: (1)

I bought a Eagle rotating assembly off ebay and had to have the rods resized and the crank rod journals turned .010. I called the vendor and they said I had the only set ever!!!! They still wouldn't give me a refund or a return so.... I say go for it. I will never use any Eagle or off brand parts again. Not worth the time to have the remachining done. This was a 496 build I did for a customer. My lq9 build I am going with Callies peroid!!

armyboyatc

iTrader: (29)

See this is why I say test them! I wanna see it. If callies or eagle or someone like that is so sure that their product is better then PROVE IT. 200 bucks is nothing to a big company like that and especially if it means getting customers to not spend money on that stuff and buy theirs...

highgear

9 times out of 10, it is the Rod BOLT that fails and not the rod itself.

racer7088

Most all these newer small block rods have stupid big 7/16 rod bolts and in over 1700 engines I have never see a bolt fail yet. On some old rods with much smaller bolts I have and on stock LS1 rods way over revved I have but not on any of these aftermarket I or H-beams so far with these huge bolts.

FWIW though I know what you are saying and these bolts are the highest stressed bolts in the engine. It's just that on these aftermarkets deals they have put such a huge bolt in 99% of them so this has stopped being an area of failure pretty much in modern times.

3timeracin

iTrader: (15)

I agree I have never had a bolt failure other than stock and ussually the cap gets out of shape from the bolt stretching and bearings spin first. I am not by any means as high profile as the sponsors on here but the same 1700+ engines in 20+ year career and 5 years dynoing at West Tech. I have seen alot of crazy stuff and rods don't break for one specific reason. Someone mentioned earlier you have to look at your application and go from there.
How many people are running Lentz or Arrow rods ? not many besides Nascar and anyone drag racing with big power and rpm uses aluminum. Like Eric said with a 7/16 bolt there is very little chance for bolt failure. Rods have function built into the design and need to be selected rods according. Consider a nascar engine with small 3/8 rod bolts and rods that weigh 450 grams and even the pistons are not super lightweight with the current 4.185". They live pretty damn good for the power they produce. But that style engine makes little torque and torque breaks parts.