And, OBTW, on the AL rods.....steel (and some irons) have a property that aluminum does not possess. If the distortion/load is kept below a certain level, steel can be loaded and unloaded an infinite amount of times; it never has a life limit. Aluminun never can do that; there is always a finite number of load cycles on any Al part. You can increase the number of Al load cycles but never make it infinite. So there is some truth in the limited life of Al rods. It probably has been made better by BME, but there is no such thing as infinite load cycle Al. (Otherwise perfectly good airplanes are retired after so many flight hours due to this factor.) Hence, the article cited is likely truthful in saying the rods will live on the street for a couple hundred kmiles. In a 500 HP slant 6, however, the loads are going to be pretty high. I kinda epxect the OP to be leaning on this engine....a LOT.
