i've got a set of 5.7 scat i- beams on a gm forged crank, and je pistons. the rods have 3/8" arp studs. the caps are tightened to approx. 70 ft. lbs. i bought this motor from a friend with 2k miles. it ran perfect for the 2k miles. The tech guy from SCAT tells me that no 3/8" stud should never be that tight, and should never exceed 45-50ft.lbs. so i took off the rod caps, and all of the bearings look very good. virtually no wear visible, as expected for a 2k mile motor. my question is... is there any reason why the caps would have been tightened soo much, and would 2k miles be enough to expose bearing failure due to overtorquing??
also, can it hurt to go ahead and replace all of the rod bearings and torque them to 45 ft. lbs, or was there a motive to the 70ft.lbs. torquing?? help!

 

You should measure them and make sure they are not overstretched... That could be bad and when a rod bolt breaks BOOM there goes the whole short block.

To be safe I would get a new set of bolts from Scat with ARP lube and make sure you install them and TQ them to the proper spec this time.

Bret

 

When using a rod bolt stretch guage they can very well go to 70 ftlb's.
I just did a 351W Ford with ARP 3/8 bolts with the stretch guage and they seemed awfully tight when pulled to stretch spect. I wanted to see how tight and I took them off with a torque wrench,guess what it took 76ftlb to loosen them on a digital wrench.I know more torque to loosen...Not that much more........
I called ARP and they said that's "about right".I asked them why they didn't issue torque spects that high.The answer was that all would not go that high and the differances in torque wrenches and lubes.Sooooooo don't know but I will still use the stretch guage on ALL rod bolts.