Now that I have had some time to think back to our good ole' Sprint car days here is what I came up with on rods. Please chime in if I have gone wrong somewhere.

Billet steel are pretty heavy and not as strong as forged steel.

The downside to aluminum is that it has a much shorter life than steel. This means you’ll have to measure for stretch (as Joe mentioned) and replace rods that show signs of stretch which is quite often for street driven cars with aluminum rods.

Once again titanium is great but expensive it has the same characteristics and expands at about the same rate as steel, so you could run them with no problems.

As I said before I would go with some good H-Beam rods. Now that we are talking about what kind of material to get I think fully machined forged steel rods are the best choice for strength next to titanium and are somewhat lightweight but not the lightest.

I did some hardcore research on this a few months ago because I am in the process of putting together a new shortblock for my car. Also make sure to get the new ARP fasteners.

 

These guys are stocking some nice rods for modulars. Might at least be worth a phone call to them for some advise. According to their website the I-beams support a higher HP level then H-beam.

http://www.modularperformance.com/rods1.asp

 

Looks like they think forged H beams are the way to go too. Glad to see I do not have to delete my previous post.

 

Come one, I say we get everyone on tr.com for a group purchase of Titanium rods, get it down to $50-$100 a rod

 

Something is not adding up with that info..

 

Billet steel should be stronger then forged steel. A forged steel rod is just a expensive casting process where hot steel is shaped under intense pressure. A bullit piece is a solid piece that is machined into shaped. Thus billet would be stronger overall. Of course the makup of the steel has as much to do with it as the process.

I was just surprised by the whole H-beam I-beam HP levels. Generally I've heard H-beam is for high compression setups and I-beam is for high rpms.

 

forged rods are stronger. A piece of billet has the "grain" of the metal all in one direction like a piece of wood (2x4). A forged rod has the "grain" in the general shape of a rod (think around a knot in a piece of wood). Its hard to explain, but think of taking a 2x4 and cutting a shape out of it resembling a connecting rod, where the "big end" is connected to the beam, it would be extremely easy to break your wood rod because that area is not going with the grain.

I know its confusing but trust me, forged is stronger than billet