Stock Magnum rods/pistons durability ?

blk00rt said
the two that I have never heard anything bad about is Brian at IMM engines and Flying Ryan at FRP. Ryan is more of a tuner but he has shops that he deals with for engine builds.

Bobzilla said
I bought a set of bare Engine Quest castings to have prepped locally. A few months later I found out about IMM engines here on FABO. From what I have seen, If I could do it over again or on my next pair, I would call IMM and get their prepped heads.
Maybe give them a call and see if they fit your build plans.

I have actually talked to Brian at IMM, he is actually a very nice guy. Brian and Chris at PIE know each other, and have quite a debate between them about the set up of the EQ heads. IMM uses the original iron/steel valve guides, and puts on beehive springs. The iron guides have been known to go bad, so he uses proprietary valves with hardened chrome stems as a solution. PIE uses replaces the guides with bronze ones, and uses a traditional spring. Their thought is that the bronze guide is foolproof and, the regular spring as the advantage of having the inner spring as failsafe if the outer spring were to fail to help prevent dropping a valve. IMM's response is most OE guides are steel/iron and last the life of the engine. I'm not sure I buy the argument against beehives. I work at a car dealer, and a walk through the shop will prove that there are a lot of OE beehive springs that do not fail. As a side note, some friends of mine have seen a IMM head failure, granted it was on a set of Chevy head, but still a concern. I have not seen it directly, so I try to take that with a grain of salt.