RE: Rod Reconditioning or Not?

[Steven Charette <stevec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom,
	I would not arbitrarily replace the wrist pins - they are either
good or bad.  I've personally never seen a lot of bad wrist pins.  And if
the rods are bent, you can usually read that in the bearings on tear-down.

	As far as rod reconditioning, I would base my decision on how you
plan to use the motor.  If it's just a cruiser, it's probably fine.  If
you're beating it up and down the 1320, I'd definitely have them
reconditioned and install new bolts.  Rod bolts are only good for 3
torquings - each time they are torqued they stretch a little and after
repeated stretching they work harden and are prone to failure.

	That said we used to build what we called "grenade motors".
Basically pull it down (383, 413, 440, didn't matter), clean it up, berry
brush the cylinders, swap banks on the pistons, and put it back together.
Screw on a high volume oil pump and go racin'.  Funny, we never grenaded
one.  Fastest one I had ran 11.40's in a 3200 lb Fleet Special with a
hydraulic camshaft and a six-pack, of all things - shooting ducks all the
way through 3rd gear.  A couple of weeks after that we were pitted in front
of Mr. John Tedder hisself and after looking the car over he said "you
should get rid of that six-pack".  I had a cast iron manifold and a 750
Holley center section in the truck that we had cannibalized for parts for
the six pack - we had the 4bbl up and running before first round of
eliminations.  We won both bracket two and "King of the Hill" that day.

	I'm gonna have to find that picture and put it up on my Facebook
page :)

	Anyway, if you're going to have the rods completely reconditioned
(new bolts, straighten, grind the caps/resize and the whole nine yards) you
may want to compare prices to a set of aftermarket H-beams.  I've been
buying them on eBay when I can get 'em cheap ($250-$300 is my target price
range).  Have had equally good luck with Eagles and Scat.

SC

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Watters [mailto:tomwatters@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 3:23 PM
To: 1962to1965mopars@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Rod Reconditioning or Not?

When I disassembled my '65 Block, #6 rod had spun bearing. I have a spare
rod from another engine, in sme condition as the other 7 rods that I have.

I plan to turn the rod journals crank before I put it back together.

Should I just replace the wrist pins and use the rods as-is, or must they be
re-conditioned?  The block has about 80K miles on it.  The extra Rod I have
was reconditioned about 2000 miles before it was taken down.

Thoughts?


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