SPM Rods Not usable - anybody had any issues?

[mcandmar]

Just had a lengthy conversation with Philip from Bassed Down Balancing re the SPM rods. In short he isn’t happy with them at all, two out of the set are 5.5grams heavier than the others and his opinion they are not usable. He has advised i send them back to the supplier for replacement for a more matching set. Has anybody else had issues with these, or had any dealings with SPM since the group buy?

I swear this engine project in jinxed, maybe i should just give up and dump all the parts on ebay

Mark.

[Rusty]

That's pretty poor. Give your supplier or SPM a bell and point out their deficiencies. The SCAT rods are a lot better than that from memory. What was the £££s on the SPMs out of interest?

[Acidburn]

I think aelred commented to me about these and possibly the scat rods and how they balance up. I would be interested to know how the scat one's compare tho.

[terrybullwon]

I think aelred commented to me about these and possibly the scat rods and how they balance up. I would be interested to know how the scat one's compare tho.

More than likely bout the SCAT rods, cheap and cheerful. Send them back and ask there opinion of workmanship

[Flat on my back]

.

I put the weights of my Scats on here somewhere...1 of the 5 was 1, that's 'one' gramme more than the others!

5.5, that's not a matched set by a long shot...

[Ross]

Mark,

Philip had a few issues with my SPM rods when he balanced them too; the variance wasn't so great so he was able to put a working set together. Personally I was going to email Sten Parner about it and try for an exchange set if they were unuseable so I suggest this is the best route.

As one of mine let go (convinced it wasn't a defective rod btw) I have 4 remaining, would probably want inspecting just in case, but they're at Coreys. Providing he hasn't used/binned them, got no problem letting you put those into the mix and see if you can't get a better matching set if you like.

Worst-case, get a new set of rods (SCAT or the likes) and offload the 4 near-matching rods as a set; I know Grant @ AET Turbo's took a few sets inthe group-buy for use in Golf engines, and a while back asked if I had any more.

PM me if you have any difficulty and I'll see what I can do; still have all the original emails from SPM from the group-buy.

Cheers
Ross

[aelred]

From what I have seen I think all these cheap rods sold as SPM, Scat, 034 or what ever they are, are all the same rods, (just different supplier name hetched on them) they all look identical to each supplier and highly likely all made in China. Even the original wrapping is the same.

[S2central.net]

Heheh - now theres a theory... contraversial, but not ridiculous. I have long wondered how there are so many suppliers of rods for our wee user base.

[denniselbows]

[QUOTE=aelred they all look identical to each supplier and highly likely all made in China. .[/QUOTE]

now that is scary made in china usaly means rubbish

[4WheelDrifter]

Phil was concerned when he saw my rods that they were SPMs. But the gross weights were well within a gram of each other, they did however need to be matched to the pistons to balance out the end to end deviation in weight.
Were your rods wrapped in waxy paper, the usual Chinese way? I think Aelred may be right, from the rods I have seen.

[Acidburn]

Phil was concerned when he saw my rods that they were SPMs. But the gross weights were well within a gram of each other, they did however need to be matched to the pistons to balance out the end to end deviation in weight.
Were your rods wrapped in waxy paper, the usual Chinese way? I think Aelred may be right, from the rods I have seen.

That sounds like the scat rods that I had

[Flat on my back]

.

My Scats came greased and in sealed placcy bags...might just have to keep my fingers crossed.

[BRY]

Grant didn't have any issues with his SPM rods, they are in his engine now and have been since the group buy.
He has had that car on the hub mounted Dynopack and it gave 648bhp at the hubs.
He is looking into buying some more sets.
I also think that they are all forged in China, but then go different routes from there.
The rods for our engines can be used in the 1.8t 20v engines found in everything VAG.

[repo]

I have ordered some dozens of those cheapos from different suppliers. Aelred is right, they all look too much alike to come from different manufacturer, although some of them came from Europe, and some other bunch fron US.

In the last bunch I think I took six sets, and was able to sell four sets of five and two sets of four, as there were big issues with weight matching.

I also took a few to be measured, and they were pretty far from being perfectly straight, never to mention the small and big ends being non-parallel. There were also minor difference in length of the rod.

Issues are not that huge, so motor may startup and run "good", but still internal friction may multiply, causing lots of issues when parts start to age. Also small difference in compression ratio between cylinders cause vibration, which ever more cause excessive wear to the internals, like pistons and bearings.

In my point of view these cheapos are an upgrade when replacing original ones, yet not being that much better, only a little less bad.

Maybe good for some RS2 upgrade or so, but for more demanding applications, especially when longevity is a concern, I definately recommend paying a couple hundreds more, and using some known brand rods.

I have stopped selling and using these some three years ago, and nowadays sell and recommend PO rods, proudly made and hand-checked in Finland.

[Faheemo]

Hmm I had huge differences in the weights of my SPM rods i got from the group buy.
Not sure how the balancing guy sorted it out thou ..