Lee's Garage

[lee303]

lol, well, ripped the astra engine apart today, not much else to report!


apart from these, am building an engine for someone at the mo and this apparently is what passes for a steel rod nowadays...









bad machining, overall poor finish quality, shot peened finish has been filed after it was done to remove sharp edges, the little oil groove and the bearing tabs were full of bits of dirt, the ‘H’ section was very inconsistent in width over its length and the gudgeon pin was too tight to fit in the rod, marks all over the rod, all from a company who bang on about how much they QC their products, so much so they now can offer them to the english market, and even worse, they were supplied via a third party who said in an email reply to me about their quality , oh yes the PEC rods have never been on the money appearance wise....lovely, won’t be using them!

[Brian_S]

I managed to do this with an angle grinder the other day:



First time I've managed to slice the disc off and leave it attached to what I was cutting! lmao

Nearly finished the new handbrake too:




Would be good to anodise it and all I've got to do then is make a bracket for the other side of the pivot.

[steveboyslim]

lol, well, ripped the astra engine apart today, not much else to report!


apart from these, am building an engine for someone at the mo and this apparently is what passes for a steel rod nowadays...









bad machining, overall poor finish quality, shot peened finish has been filed after it was done to remove sharp edges, the little oil groove and the bearing tabs were full of bits of dirt, the ‘H’ section was very inconsistent in width over its length and the gudgeon pin was too tight to fit in the rod, marks all over the rod, all from a company who bang on about how much they QC their products, so much so they now can offer them to the english market, and even worse, they were supplied via a third party who said in an email reply to me about their quality , oh yes the PEC rods have never been on the money appearance wise....lovely, won’t be using them!

What do people expect ?
Re-badged China's finest as with many other rods sold by some very well known companies.
I sell the same product which I inspect first (when you get a chance weigh each rod) and I also sell Arrow.
The cheaper rods out sell Arrow 20-1, the Arrow are over twice the price.

Steve

[seanr28]

Interesting read re rods, make you wonder about there so called cosworth pistons too!

[steveboyslim]

Interesting read re rods, make you wonder about there so called cosworth pistons too!

The Cosworth pistons are made by Cosworth.

Steve

[DarrenH]

apparently is what passes for a steel rod nowadays...

they are cheap and they are "motorsport buuuh". what more do you want, accurate machining ?? so last year.

[lee303]

What do people expect ?
Re-badged China's finest as with many other rods sold by some very well known companies.
I sell the same product which I inspect first (when you get a chance weigh each rod) and I also sell Arrow.
The cheaper rods out sell Arrow 20-1, the Arrow are over twice the price.

Steve

thing is steve, if the guy had said, i can supply Cosworth pistons and some ****e rods you wouldn’t want to use but they are cheap, i would have said 'get me some good rods please’ but he didn’t, he said these were a UK rod,which i presumed(mistake on my part) would mean from farndon or similar, he then started backtracking on that statement when asked directly, we didn’t get the from PEC direct as i had already said to the guy whose engine it is that i wouldn’t use them as they are ****, and the supplier(who gets them from PEC obviously) was actually cheaper!

will pm about this though, as you may be able to supply the rods i need, it isn’t for a vaux engine...

[lee303]

The Cosworth pistons are made by Cosworth.

Steve

yes, the pistons are lovely and definitely genuine cosworth

[youri]

Always working on everybody's cars. Nova back together already?
Rods don't look so good. I'm using Catcams rods in my C20XE, bit cheaper then Arrow's but should be good. Looks better than this anyway

[jonlem]

thing is steve, if the guy had said, i can supply Cosworth pistons and some ****e rods you wouldn’t want to use but they are cheap, i would have said 'get me some good rods please’ but he didn’t, he said these were a UK rod,which i presumed(mistake on my part) would mean from farndon or similar, he then started backtracking on that statement when asked directly, we didn’t get the from PEC direct as i had already said to the guy whose engine it is that i wouldn’t use them as they are ****, and the supplier(who gets them from PEC obviously) was actually cheaper!

will pm about this though, as you may be able to supply the rods i need, it isn’t for a vaux engine...

This has to be a quality control thing as only yesterday someone on the Audi forum I use who does know a fair bit about engines said he uses a lot of the PEC rods and advised someone to get them from PEC when he got to that stage. Now he is either talking about a different PEC or he has been lucky as from what I have seen he takes building engines to a level that I have hardly ever seen anyone go to.

[jonlem]

Always working on everybody's cars. Nova back together already?
Rods don't look so good. I'm using Catcams rods in my C20XE, bit cheaper then Arrow's but should be good. Looks better than this anyway

I have used those in the past and the little ends had not been de burred at all which we were very dissapointed about being that they weren't far off Farndon money

[youri]

I have used those in the past and the little ends had not been de burred at all which we were very dissapointed about being that they weren't far off Farndon money

Sorry I dont know what you mean by ''de burred'' my English is not that good. All I know is they looked good to me and they are proven on a 600hp LET engine built by the company how sold the rods to me.
And I paid 500euro for them, that is 440gbp at the moment. Don't know how expensive the Farndon rods are youre talking about

[lee303]

I have used those in the past and the little ends had not been de burred at all which we were very dissapointed about being that they weren't far off Farndon money

i agree its a QC issue, the little ends weren’t de burred very well on these either btw, but tbh, it just annoys me because all their website goes on about is their quality control, and any pics you can find of their steel rods look nothing like these, they all have a surface finish similar to an arrow or farndon
how or why it happened is not really my concern though, but i have no idea how they can have left PEC looking like that if they have been checked, any pics of said audi rods?

and youri, no mate, nova is still in bits, having a little holiday at the back of the garage...

[jonlem]

I don't have any pictures Lee, usual type thread whewre someone was asking opinions on what to use for a rebuild and I noticed he had mentiined PEC rods which suprised me, mainly as most of the cheap rods on the forum come through a well known forum user from oversees so I would of thought he would of said use them rather than anyone else ! especially as their only £330 for 5 ? no idea what the PEC ones cost.

What were yours for ?

As for Cat Cams, I expected better for that money and felt like a bit of a tit for advising my mate to use them, this was a long time ago though and there were no cheaper options back then that anyone would of trusted. I believe it was Rob? @ RSC or something that supplied them, I think that company went under not long after we got them as well !

[lee303]

i remember that rsc fella, mine are for a duratec turbo i’m building for a mates escort rst, we’re still not sure what the rods cost as they came as a package deal for 960 with the pistons, which did seem cheap at the time, but had i known they were PEC rods it would have made more sense, either way, we’ll be using something nicer than these for sure

[Tathan]

I have used those in the past and the little ends had not been de burred at all which we were very dissapointed about being that they weren't far off Farndon money

youri - a burr is the sharp/ragged edge left by machining, chamfer tool or similar "deburrs" this.

As for Catcam rods - Rob Will with the Nova Spider madthing has just had a fairly catastrophic little end failure with these. I'll point him this way, he's got some good pics unfortunately

[jonlem]

I have seen the damage ! Lucky for me I did have someone build that engine who sorted them out but many people would of maybe just thrown them in assuming they were expensive and thus must be fit for the job.

Shame really.

Thanks for the explanation too

[youri]

Thanks for the explanation. Don't really like this story's . I didn't notice it when I fitted them and I usually inspect everything proparly. Will see what happens. Only had one mapping session with them until 5000 rpm 200bhp. Then had some problems.
Hope it won't come out the side of the engine next time at 8000 rpm

[steveboyslim]

Catcams are re-badged rods.

Steve

[Benn]

apart from these, am building an engine for someone at the mo and this apparently is what passes for a steel rod nowadays...


bad machining, overall poor finish quality, shot peened finish has been filed after it was done to remove sharp edges, the little oil groove and the bearing tabs were full of bits of dirt, the ‘H’ section was very inconsistent in width over its length and the gudgeon pin was too tight to fit in the rod, marks all over the rod, all from a company who bang on about how much they QC their products, so much so they now can offer them to the english market, and even worse, they were supplied via a third party who said in an email reply to me about their quality , oh yes the PEC rods have never been on the money appearance wise....lovely, won’t be using them!

I've been saying that about them for a long time.

[Gary_808]

IRC was Pec i think that supplied a couple of sets a rods too a friend, big ends and little ends were the wrong size, which conveniantly measured up indentically to a set of scrap chinese rods, they swore blind they were from aussie or some ****, he gave up in the end, even though they were indentical but wrong!

[Brian_S]

Found that Glebe do input shafts for a standard T5. £245 + delivery + vat sir...

[jonlem]

Surely though Brian there is a problem elsewhere as the failure you had is hardly a common one ?

The glebe stuff is ok but then the standard input shaft in a t5 is normally fine on most applications?

[lee303]

the clutch/gearbox alignment was the other issue jonboy...

and thats brilliant news Brian, ordered one i take it?

[jonlem]

Sorry to sound confused but why not just use a used input shaft or get another box ?