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Shown above is our BRAND NEW 5140 forged steel steel stock replacement AND performance rods. Finally, a rod that works great for stock replacement press fit pin applications as well as high performance engines at an incredibly reasonable price. Forget about reusing 40 year old stock rods! We now have an option that is many times stronger for considerably less money!
The beam shape and size on these rods is remarkably similar to the famous 426 Hemi rods (compare them to the picture of factory 426 Hemi rods below), however we have kept the single most important feature of Hemi rods: the 7/16" ROD BOLTS. The weakest part of any rod is almost always the bolts. Chrysler engineers used 3/8" bolts on all production 383's and 440's (even Six Pack Rods!!) but for Hemi's they stepped up to the 7/16." Not only do we offer the same 7/16" bolts used in Hemi Rods, but we use only genuine ARP bolts, the standard of the industry, AMERICAN MADE right here in Southern California.
However, unlike the 1,050 grams that a Hemi rod weighs, due to cutting edge manufacturing processes, our 5140 steel rods weigh in even lighter than factory "Six pack" rods weigh! And remember, they do it with the much heavier and stronger 7/16" bolts, which (even at 920 grams) Six Pack Rods don't offer!
These rods use a non-bushed small end for factory size 1.094" press fit applications. The sizing of the small end is GUARANTEED to be within 1.0918"-1.0922" for a perfect 1.8-2.2 thousandths press fit. Length is factory RB at 6.76." Width of the rod's big end is also to factory (1.014") spec for no side clearance issues. Both the big and small end housing bore are finished to precision tolerances on AMERICAN MADE Sunnen Power stroke honing equipment. Finally, the sides of the beam are polished to a smooth finish to get rid of any stress risers.
One other important fact to remember is that metal has what is known as a fatigue life. Everyone has bent a paper clip back and forth so many times until it breaks. Once it breaks, it has reached enough "cycles" to get beyond the limits of it's fatigue life. Connecting rods are also made of metal and also have a fatigue life. Every time the piston fires, the rod is compressed and every time the crankshaft turns back around, it drags the piston back down from TDC. This causes the rod to expand and contract, or "cycle" just like bending the paper clip back and forth. The only difference is that the rod is much stronger than a paper clip (unless maybe you're talking about Ford rods) and it's being cycled millions of times as the engine is running. The more cycles on the rod, the weaker it will become, and the closer to failure your engine will be. These rods are BRAND NEW, so they will always be starting with ZERO cycles on them. That alone is worth a huge amount of strength. After forty years and thousands upon thousands of miles, do we really know how many millions and millions of cycles those old factory rods have on them?
With the cost of cleaning, magnafluxing, resizing, buying new bolts, polishing the beams, etc, etc with a set of stock rods, going with our new aftermarket version is a no brainer!!
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