Mopar 383 Connecting Rods

[HP HUNTER]

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

I did most every rod in a small shop for over 10 years.

All brands and from street rebuilds to race engines of all kinds.

Sunnen manual LBB machine with the gauge.

Did big ends, small ends, bushed rods, offset bushed and reduced pin sizes using bushings we made or bought.

Stock rods used in race engines were generally out of round once run....

Usually a good amount....

We used SPS bolts back then and picked the best looking cores we could find.....Did not matter once it was run....out of round...

Mag, shotpeen, resize, bush pin end....generally

Very difficult to hone big ends or even pin ends and hold them true and without a taper one way or the other....

I would chuck the mandrels up in a lathe and true up the brass guide shoes often and dress the stones....constantly...

I used the gauge to check the rod and as described held it flat and carefully pulled it away from the back reading the size. A very tedious process......honing to size and keeping them as straight as possible....

I always honed rods and let them sit and they change size as the honing process heats them up.....let 'em cool and touch 'em up....

A buddy had a shop with a similar machine but with a power stroker and I don't know if that helped as I think it did pairs of rods at one time...

Honing anything was a time consuming process if you were trying to do as good as possible....

I marvel at the Youtube videos of Block hones that do a V8 without an operator constantly running the machine and checking the bore sizes....

Honing a race block and doing a real good job was the shop owners specialty along with head work.....Any block he honed made better power than previously usually....



I also rebuilt Mack connecting rods a lot......new bushings mostly....big ends were usually pretty good even after a half million miles ! Engines in UPS trucks....

You have two rods your honing..........theres .0025 to hone to size on both rods, one rod has .0005 taper the other has .0007 taper. How do you set these two rods up on the already trued mandrel?