Connecting Rods needed for try his crank
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Nope....do you really trust the Chinese to supply the correct steel? Like they did with dog food, drywall and dozens of other products?
Personally I would run 340 rods before the ChiCom parts...
Rant over
The answer is almost certainly "It depends".
The Chinese are capable of building quality products, if you're willing to spend the money supervising them through the whole process, possibly including having someone on site to perform testing along the way. You won't get things for cents vs dollars, which is what most people buying Chinese made products are looking for.
But if you're an American company, and you need to have forgings cranked out by the thousands, you're willing to 50-75% of the direct cost to produce vs the US instead of 10%, and you have a robust QC process, you can make quality parts using Chinese vendors.
Scat sells tons of kits to US enthusiasts and has a good reputation for solid parts at a decent price. You can certainly get better out of a higher priced kit, from US sourced materials and machining, but you lose out on the lower end of the market.
Personally, I'd run a new rod, with new ARP bolts, machined and QC'd here in the US using a Chinese forging over a 50 year old factory rod that's been resized, rebushed and with new bolts/nuts. In the end you're buying from a US company that is putting it's name on the line, I believe that they're doing the checks and inspections required to utilize those Chinese forgings/castings.
