I've personally used thier product in four builds. You are right to be conccerned, however the issues IMO are minor and easilly addressed during the build. They make a good product for a good price. But IMO most of what is on the site is hard sell. Some reality: The cranks are good. Not great. They do have some taper issues and you should have everything measured before anything gets used. I've not had one that was out of spec as far as taper or journal size. But I have had a couple that were right on the edge of bad due to taper. I also had one that was too small in the timing chain step too. Also, you will have to chamfer the rod bearings due to the huge radius on the fillets. This can be done carefully by your shop and they will have to. In case you're curious, pretty much all cheaper cranks have issues with finish quality. Which is why I say measure everything. Next, the rods... This is a pet peeve of mine because I wrote Brandon about it and nothing has ever been done. That was 4 years ago. The issues are on the small end, the pin to bushign clearance is not made with emery or sand paper as instructed, but rather a pin hone, and most need to be honed (they are too tight). Next the big ends... they assemble them with std oil, torque to the ARP lubed-fastener torque value, and then finish machine them. Except ARP bolts need ARP lube to run the low torque, or they need to be lubed with oil and torqued much higher before they are machined. The problem comes if you take the rods and cycle the bolts. Which is also not done but should be. This gets things into a repeatable pattern in terms of the bolts and the rods big end distortion from their load. When you cycle the bolts and use the correct lube (included with the rods) and torque to the spec ARP wants, the big ends distort like mad because the bolts are loading the rod more with the correct lube. As a result of this, the big ends need to be corrected. Lastly, the "weight macthed" is a bunch of BS. They consider the whoel rod weight matched. Well, the reason you have to have "matched weights" is becaus the ends of teh rods take different roles in the running engine. As such, all the small ends have to weight the same, and all the big ends have to weight the same. We dont care if the whole rod weighs the same so long as the ends do. They will tell you not to grind on the rods, but you have to in order to properly internal balance them because teh seperate weights are all over the place, just like a stock set of rods. Do not buy thier balancing as a result of this. Plan to balance in internally by your shop. Again, for the cost, it si a great product. However, assume there will be additional labor required to make the kit "right", and assume that to make it perfect, you will have to turn the crank down. And, as I said, all others.. Eagle, Scat, Ohio Crank, etc all have the same issues. I have not used K1, but I have builders I know that use them exclusively so that is a good place to look too.
