Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

That's an interesting site. I used it to check who is importing nitromethane. (http://portexaminer.com/search.php?s...t=nitromethane) Schumacher Electric & VP Racing Fuels are there, but also a lot of names I don't recognize.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Yep. If you do a search, you would probably remember many years ago the war between Schumacher, NHRA and VP Fuels. As I remember, Schumacher was buying Nitromethane from China and selling it to other racers at a lower price than VP and probably also hurting the profits.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

At the end of the day isn't this all a question of quality control? If the parts get back from China with same material quality and saves the consumer some cash, is that not a good thing? I know a lot of crap comes back here from over seas due to lack of quality control but if manley is ensuring it meets their particular quality standards, I don't see an issue.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Ariel,
They only way a company can do so by creating a standard or specification for their products and having contract first article inspection oversight on location at the foundry or manufacturing facility.

Do a search on this forum on recent complaints as regards to the inconsistencies of their retainers.

Nevertheless, the Israeli company that makes the Titanium valves for Manley, is a reputable company that makes aerospace components.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Third party audit/inspection and quality control companies are now a huge industry in China. You can get just about any ISO or ASTM test you want done there now. You can have tests done during and post production……whatever you want and even more commonly inspection of container loading to make sure you don’t get ripped off. Even Chinese companies use these services themselves now to make sure their sub-contractors don’t rip them off. There is a full spectrum of manufacturing there from absolute top level quality manufacturing to companies that can’t make anything but garbage. If you have something from China that junk it’s probably because the number one criteria of the guy selling it to you was getting it at the lowest possible price.
Interesting thing going on there now especially in Guangdong Province is that lots of big corporations are now moving out to places like Vietnam because they can make things even cheaper.

So based on you comments about quality and consistency they are probably less concerned about the quality than they are the price.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Good explanation and I agree; just tried to give the Cliff note's version.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Cut open the oil filter, it will give a better picture on what happened first. Had the same thing happen recently, and the filter was loaded with brass indicating a bearing failure.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Good point. In aluminum rod combos where the rod has plenty of cycles you would tend to think its a rod failure , BUT , a bearing failure is certainly a possibility......... with the rod getting kicked / stretched out of shape that in itself may have caused the bearing failure.......chicken or egg?:confused:

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

Every aluminum rod failure I had pulled into in the middle. Big eng spun freely on the crank, with a good bearing inside. All big end failures I have seen were bearing failures. If it's black, it sure wasn't the rod.
When you set your bearing clearances, think about the expansion rates.

Re: Steel rod life expectancy
 

This rod had a clean break right in the middle of the beam...........but the bearing was also blackened and destroyed........along with the rest of the big end in the pan..............the pin end was perfect:confused: