So ive got some Eagle rods and ebay China rods here. Here's an visual inspection and weights. All 4 ebay rods were 532g with bolts. 3 of the Eagles weighed in at 534g with bolts with one at 536g. You can see that the eagles are thicker front to back but the ebays are thicker side to side. I also noticed the ebay have 3 in line oil ports for the pin while the Eagle has 2 offset ports. The ebay and eagle arp 2000 bolts look exactly the same minus the eagle stamp. The lip around the crank section is thicker on the Eagle. Also on the Eagle you can see a ridge down the rod arm itself. Machining looks equal on both with the Eagles looking maybe more precise.

Eagle: 341.00
Ebay: 291.06

Havent seen an online comparison before so here ya go. Which do you think is the better grab at only a 50$ price difference.

I am in no way an expert and have basic tools nothing precise.

 

Here’s my non scientific take on it. IMHO The eBay rods would be at least double the strength of the OEM rods. I would think about changing out the fake arp bolts for real arp. However this would probably throw the overall price over Eagles. Now’s your opportunity to do so destructive tests on them both for all of us😉

 

If you want a lil extra power, it shouldn't be a problem. If you're looking to make a 500 HP screamer, well I dunno man.

I have Eagle rods and JE pistons, I haven't cranked it up hard yet but so far it's holding 15 PSI.

 

From what I understand almost all the forged rods out there are forged in china, some then get finish machined in the US to get a MUSA sticker, while "china" rods are finished overseas. So the base forgings are all very very similar.

 

Definitely gonna test for y'all
I'll still be torsen/5 speed so anything over 300s gonna just break those like my last miata and it's 3 5 speeds lmao
These two look entirely different oddly enough. Different widths both ways? Different holes, and the ridge. But im not sure.

 

There's probably more than one rod factory in China. Probably several.

 

Who broke/bent their china rods to this day? My china rods were also very even in weight, couldn't really ask for more

 

I didn’t mean to imply those two rods are from
the same base forging. Just that the metallurgy of each is probably almost identical.

 

We're running those exact China Rods.
The car came with them and was tuned to 250whp for about 5-7 years prior to our ownership.
We rebuilt the motor last year after the turbo died and its been running at 300whp for the past 12 months.

 

While we are on the topic, anyone know the lightest reasonably priced rods? For an n/a build. I see OEM are ~570g

 

K1(490gr) or Carillo pro a (416gr). I believe the factory rods weigh 530gr.

 

I weighed a factory rod and it was 540gr. I have a set of manley's for sale so I decided to weigh them and also compare the big end weights since that is were most of the inertia occurs. The OE BE weighed 474gr and the manley was 406gr. I did not expect that large of a difference since the manley uses larger bolts.

 

Well I know the Crower billet rods we have are forged on the USA. Carrillo, Dyers, etc arr all forged in the USA...maybe all the cheap rods.are forged in China