The quality of the hole is much, much better when done this way.In the racing aftermarket industry, when a void is either found or created in the market, it generally doesn’t take long for that void to be be filled – and especially when an entire customer base is suddenly looking for an alternative. When longtime manufacturer Brooks Aluminum Rods went out business last August, a large number of Top Alcohol, Pro Modified, and Nostalgia Top Fuel racers were left to find rods for their extreme applications elsewhere.
At the PRI Show this week, our good friends at GRP Connecting Rods shared us with one of the newest addition to their huge catalog, which is GRP designed and engineered from top to bottom, but has been weight-matched to the former Brooks piece used in the aforementioned blown alcohol and blown nitro combinations, thus helping to fill part of a void in the market.
These rods from GRP feature a clover leaf design that’s meant to handle stress from such demanding applications, with more material in the high stress areas around the crankshaft end of the rod. Unlike the forged construction of the Brooks part, GRP has utilized an Isotropic Billet material for theirs.
As well, GRP has performed advanced machining methods on these rods, in which they hone not just the big end of the rod, but both ends in a single process that creates a relationship between the two ends that’s unmatched in the industry. According to GRP’s Woody O’Connell, this process created a cylindricity (good tolerance of circularity and straightness). “The quality of the hole is much, much better when done this way.”
These rods from GRP are available with either standard ARP L19 HEMI rod bolts, or ARP’s CA625 upgraded bolts.
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