Who has reused them with no problems? Who has reused them and had them fail? I have even heard of people installing new ones and having them fail. I talked to the shop who did my work and they said not to worry, go ahead and reuse them. This is a very well known and highly trusted shop here too, But still I worry and the pistons and rods are already assembled.

 

If you think of the forces that the rod endures, it is a highly stressed part. For every revolution ,the rod turns at the height of it travel, the rod bolts are being forced to stretch.They accelerate and suddenly stop only to accelerate the opposite direction. The rod bolts take hella abuse. This force grows significantly when it is being spun even faster say 6500RPM vs. 2000RPM. If you were to use a quality fastener ARP, it would be cheaper insurance than the damage caused by a broken rod bolt. I had broken a rod in my 86'monte carlo ss and it was bad. The block, crank and head were junk. The piston skirt exploded and the skirt was in the oil pan. I still have the piston so I will try to get some photos up. It was bad. All in all, new QUALITY name brand fasteners are cheap insurance. My .02 on that.

 

Anyone have PN's for the stock replacment in ARP?

 

The rod bolts on an lt1 are one of its weak points. Simply buying better pistons and better rods bolts increase max daily driver HP to about 450-500 before it breaks. The best ARP rod bolts is the L-19. They do make a cheaper one but I dont know the part number.