Trying to gauge interest in what would be a flathead rod made here in the USA. As far as I can tell there are few if any made here. I work with a forging company here in the States and we have our hand in a large portion of the US-made performance connecting rods on the market today. We are playing around with the idea of tooling one up but want to gauge interest first. Idea came from my father who, as a die-hard American, doesn't wish to use offshore rods in his 38 Ford Pickup build. If you are interested, what might be a practical price point? Would there be a specific manufacturer that you would prefer to see them branded as? D
Aluminum and brand them as Carrillo. Take a look at the cost of flathead pistons and then compare them to the price of say a chebby piston. Now look at the price of chebby rods of equal quality and build and price then at the same ratio. If I was building a flatty and needed rods I would just as soon buy american as off shore, if you can compete price wise you should be compe***ive in the market.
Not sure what the attraction will be to aluminum and we only forge steel alloys and stainless anyway so that is out of the question. It's really tough to compete with offshore. Our saving grace has been quality and delivery. I would imagine though, that most supporters of "Made in USA" would be willing to spend the few extra bucks to see USA forged on the rod.
I like the idea, and would buy US made rods as first choice as i do with everything else. Will it be I or H cross section? Without beeing a rod expert of any kind, i would consider the based on history extremely low rod failure ratio on flatheads. Some of the things to love about the Flathead rods, are moderate piston pin size, slender, light and extremely strong design with first cl*** material. One other thing that comes to mind is the length of it, giving a more moderate angle at 90 degree crank position. I read somewhere that in the 50s some people chose to use flathead rods and floating bearings in SBCs, which leads me to think the are pretty tough. I dont know, these are just some of my first thoughts. Interesting project.
I was being an ***. I doubt that Carrillo wuld allow you do use their monicer anyway. I still use a very old business model because I am not striken with money lust. Figure cost (actual) and price them with a 30% profit. They will sell and you will still make more than just wages. You will really have to play the Made in U.S.A card hard and you may not ever make greeat volumn sales but you will sell them. I don't think that there is a big market for forged flathead rods at least not on the HAMB. Maybe if you wiggle your way into the flathead LSR market. I am ashamed to say it or maybe just sorry for my fellow HAMBers but the majority of them are perfectly happy with a well dressed weezer flatty. Like I said if I was building a flatty that needed rods I would be all over a set, but if I was building a flatty it would be to prove that one can perform, do it dailey and do it well.
The floater rods were the choice for racers, both due to infinitesimal lowering of friction losses and too the "Throw-proof" effect of the floaters, and they are VERY good lightweight parts. New original rods are now getting to be quite scarce, and one of the reasons that people tried to use the new rods in all performance builds when they were available is the studs... They are not weak or failure prone in proper stock condition, but the reason they must be approached with caution is that few mechanics in the day were using torque wrenches or any reasonable control of torque...rod nuts are very critiacal and are run fairly close to their limits, and any severe overtightening will stretch them. If they are stretched and some idiot then cleaned up the nut fit by running a die over them, you have an impossible to detect bomb on your hands, and there is no way to replace the things. I would love to see a good USA replacement. Yes, flathead rods were used on SBC's and several other small journal OHV's for racing in the '50's, and Moon manufactured special rods and floater bearings for V8's that were dimensionally unsuited to the flathead rods... Why?? Early racing use of the new OHV engines ran then way beyond the RPM's that Detroit intended, and the inadequate strength of big ends combined with the locked bearings and the lack of extra parting-line clearance used on later rods and bearings caused the cl***ic s****ed-off lubrication lock up and rod toss. Flathead floaters were known to be capable of racing use and were a natural choice until better rods came along for the OHV's from Detroit and aftermarket. High RPM puts much more load on rods than increased power...in normal performance v8's, peak load on rods is at exhaust TDC, not the power stroke!
I would pay a premium for ANY product made in the U. S. A. I hope the project works out for you. It seems like more and more people are stepping up to support domestic products ( when they have a choice) .I recently went to pick up some steel for a project, and could not find the stock I needed that was American made...a sad day.
We don't produce a lot of steel these days. Hell even as far back as the '70s our market was flooded with cheap Japanese steel, some of it waas good quality but most of what you found was not. Never the less it was the beginning of the end for our steel industry. Just the product itself being manufactured or in this case forged here is a step in the right direction. I hope that more flathead guys step up here. Even if they don't I now know someone in the industry and it may help with something else that I plan on building. d20mox, Got a question for ya. if you had blueprints (even 3ds models would be avilable) for short run forgings would that be something that you could handle? I know of a couple fellas on here that could use that sort of service.
There, fixed it for you. The sad fact is, too many people look straight for the price. There is a reason why HF is still doing great in a poor economy, and it sure isnt the quality of the product.
And...a BIG problem with financing the manufacture of good parts for old Fords is the stingy mentality of apparently most old car people. They will reliably pick absolute **** unusable parts over good ones unless some miracle makes the good ones cheaper.
I would be interested if they become available. Most of the engines I build are performance type and are upgraded to the good parts. Thanks Gary
One stumbling point may be the built in bolts on the flathead rod. You're not going to be able to buy rod bolts from ARP. Henry could afford to tool up a fancy machine to thread those mega critical bolts, tooling up from scratch for a comparitively small production run would be difficult. You could overcome this by changing the design but then it wouldn't be a flathead rod. Only other thing springing to mind is the rods built for the French military. They may be offshore to you Americans but the quality is second to none and for now at least they are plentiful and cheap. Mart.
My plan as a manufacturer would be to approach one of our current customers and propose that they add this rod to their catalog. I would most likely discount the tooling cost to make it worth their while. Reverse engineering is no problem, we do it all the time. I would just need to find a few of NOS rods or a drawing to go off of. Anyone know of a source? Would you all suggest any improvements to the original rod? Material specs, dimensional changes, etc? Porkn******, We do closed impression die forging so tooling cost would be your only issue. We have done special projects with volumes as low as 5 for certain customers so the volume is no problem. PM me if you want to chat more about it. I am interested. Check out www.trentonforging.com for more information.
I'd be "all in" for I try have the same philosophy as your father. In regards to NOS rods, Vern Tardell was selling NORS rods that came out or from those French military flatheads that were built. As far as other products, doesn't ***mingham sell US-made H beam rods? I know that they are around $2K a set, but they are certainly a nice product. Best of luck with your project. I truly hope it works out for you and others adopt your mindset of trying to find ways to start making stuff in the US of A again.
I will always buy USA made parts when available. Very few off shore parts are as good as NOS production. Most flathead people are satisfied with stock used rods,as most of the books tell you they are fine for a street engine. You might want to talk to Mark Kirby at Shadow Rods,& Motor City Flathead. They were in the process of sourcing parts,for their new flathead,(its been "coming soon",for 8 years).
Those NOS French rods are also being sold at some rod shops. This pic was taken from a web site. I called today just to verify and they were in stock at that price. That would be your only compe***ion that I know of. Good luck
I would like to see a picture and the specifications of this SBC from the 50z with a nominal deck height of 9.025" and a 7.000" long flathead rod.
Woo! Just tie a knot in the rod and it comes out just right! I was thinking 6.7 stock, 7 hotrod for Chevy rods, an inch beyond reality I think... I am probably remembering Chevy rods honed out for the full floater bearings...? It was all covered in HRM circal 1955. I think Studes and Chevies used Ford parts for the conversion, anyway, and other commonly dragged OHV's got floater bearings made in special sizes by Moon. This stuff allowed the new engines to rev safely until evolution of locked rods caught up. Smokey covers normal rod evolution in his book...he said that the common cause of tossed rods was the parting rod pulling inward as rod big end stretched at high RPM, allowing edges of bearing to s****e away the oil film leading to the big bang. Along with stronger material and design for the big ends, fixing this involved relieving the parting line area slightly so that minor distortion did not close it up. This allowed normal locked rods to survive in milder hotrods, and of course the racers were soon well supplied with both aluminum and steel aftermarket rods and fishplated stockers from some suppiers..
Little Dearborn has some NOS rods for your availability. http://www.littledearborn.com/ Call this number the 1800 is offline. 612-331-2066 Good luck!
We @ CP-Carrillo can still make steel FH Ford V8 rods athough retail cost is atleast $2,500+ and we get almost no requests for them. We still only use our proprietary blend of American 4330 steel and proprietary bolts for all out rods. It's been very hard for us to compete with **** on thier Chinese made FH rod. Summit has them raginging from $518-$610. CP-Carrillo
Have even two or three people on here ever broken a french production 8BA style rod? or Whinged about the price? ( which is something like $220 a SET ) I think if the answer is no to both those questions, there is NO market unfortunately. Thanks for offering though!
Check your facts, I believe the USA is still the leading producer? Steel production has moved out of the union controlled rust belt and is now located in mostly "right to work" states. I work in a Ft Smith mill making steel for Ford, GM, HD, Hyundia, Cloyes, John Deere, Honda etc. etc., we ran 80TPH last night of 1053 and hope to continue tonight!
I think the only way to make it marketable is to make it utilize a cheap bearing, and maybe a length that would allow a guy to use a Ford piston on his offset ground Merc crank. If a guy can save $$ on bearings and pistons, and get some hipo rods out of the deal, then he's bound to be all for it.
Do it. Count me in as an American who will go to extremes to buy made in the USA or Canada. To the best of my knowledge, I have no Asian **** in my A. When I am forced to buy Asian to get something going I look for the proper American part even if its used. Its a matter of principle.
I wouldn't try to copy an OEM Flathead rod at all, it would be a waste of your time and money. It definately needs to be beefier all over in the beam areas and around the B/E(especially if its going to be an I-beam design), and it needs to have replaceable rod bolts. Since more and more Flathead guys are running blowers these days, and updated and upgraded rod could fill the void between the high dollar Crower and Carillo rods and the **** and Eagle h-beam stuff at the lower end of the price scale.
Something to consider, there are some custom manufactors of rods in the US. You can buy quality rods from Crower, Carillo, Oliver... but they cost abit If you can make a beefy lightweight rod then you able to sell some I wish \I could buy a set of ***anium rods for my flathead for less than $2000!? ................................... Taildragger&fenderless
All of our steel is sourced from the USA and sometimes Canada when availability is scarce. Just an FYI.
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