rod balancing

Any thoughts on the max amount of material removed to balance rods on the small end with a 1.094 pin. he reason i ask is we have a set of GRP 5000 series rods for a bbc and a machine shop balanced them and removed material from both ends the max removed from the small end was .012 some one expressed to me these rods are now no good i find it hard to believe and would like some others opinions
Thanks

 

rods

WOW, If it was mine, he would of bought a set of rods. Don

 

balancing

I have never had aluminum rods balanced. Crankshafts yes but rods/pistons/wrist pins-No. How high of RPM are you thinking about turning that motor? In a low enough power/RPM application they might work but then again the worst case scenario is one of them break and ruin the motor. Ask the folks at GRP what they think about folks whittling on their rods? Dave Germain

 

I was thinking the same thing as Don and Dave....I wound not take a chance.dave

 

I spoke with Brian at GRP he said they wouldn't do it in house but has seen and heard of it and doesn't feel it will be a problem as he has never seen a rod break at the little end. Also my understanding from another source is no set of rods are perfectly weighted they are within "acceptable limits" and some fine tuning is often done.

 

Not sure why someone would remove any material from a aluminum rod, but .012 of aluminum over the top shouldn't make any major strength [are weight] difference. I would be more concerned with the finish of the aluminum. Take some fine emory cloth and make sure there are no deep scratches. If this is a blown engine you should make the pin end width as wide as possible and a mininum of .250 over the top.

 

Thats one of the things that i did when i was building motors, scratches make for cracks, I would polish rods to look like chrome, Oil slips off faster and means less weight for the crank to push up and down. Like the old maid that pi$$ed in the ocean said ,Every little bit helps!

 

where the work was done is very hard to notice could polish up a bit better but no scratch or gouges and were done off to the sides at about 10 o clock and 2 o clock positions not on the very top, the very top untouched measures at .250 right from GRP and where the work was done measures .270 and that is the one with .012 removed

 

Buy a buffer wheel and compound and polish the rods on a 8in. bench grinder, you wont be sorry, rods will last longer. Gene Terenzo Sr.