Off-season engine freshen

anitrowarrior9 said

Yeah it runs great! It smokes a little when I leave, the bottom end has been together for quite awhile though. I went through the heads in the middle of the year, new valves, springs, locks, retainers, pushrods, and new rockers. When I had the heads off I noticed a small groove in 1 cylinder so I figured it would get a bore and hone, new pistons, rings, bearings and mag the crank. I have rebuilt lifters to put in also. Also ill put in a fresh trans and send the converter in for freshening. At what point are people replacing rods and or rod bolts?

Click to expand...

Your rods could just be magna fluxed checked for cracks, if they're forged rods they might last the entire engine life and on to the next.
People are racing with 50+ year old rods all the time....
I'm not sure about the bolts, but I'm interested to hear what guys have to say.
One thing that needs to be checked if you do replace the rod bolts with a dial bore gauge to the tenth .0001 is the i.d. of your big end.
Check them torqued with your old bolts and rechecked with new bolts torqued up. If it's tighter by even a tenth, I would send them in to get resized, just honed round again.