Jay Wellwood

Anyone know what is a 951 connecting rod capable of?

Ditto for a 968 connecting rod.

I'm thinking in terms of longevity here. Probably hold up to 500 HP - for a few hundred or maybe a thousand hours under 1.5 bar boost?

Voith

Standard 944 rods will hold 300whp fine, my turbo S had over 200k miles, over 100k with 312fhp.

RaRST0 forged rods are capable more than that, I think there cases of over 400 here on list, but they do fail from time to time.

Paulyy

Waqqass (spooln51) had a stock bottom end and had 480hp or there abouts. ended up throwing a rod or something.

gpr8er

IMO if your building a high dollar high hp motor 1k for new rods are a wise decision.

Jay Wellwood

Best advice I think I've heard in a long time.

alxdgr8

Torque is what kills rods, not HP.

Paulyy

both. a lot of rotating mass puts a lot of stress on the rods.

Voith

Rod stress goes up exponentially with RPM.

Dutch944

Funny how everyone tells something different..

I would also say 500hp.. But who am I..

Humboldtgrin

I wouldn't take the stock Rod past 400 flywheel HP. Wellwood said it best, spend $1G on good rods. I had the famous #2 Rod spin in my engine and it BENT the stock 951 Rod! There was nothing left of the bearing! If your looking for 500hp then get good rods or you'll spend more money in parts lost and time doing it twice if not selling it due to frustration.

Voith

Lots of interesting literature regarding rods on the interwebs

https://www.forging.org/system/files...adAnalysis.pdf

http://emweb.unl.edu/Mechanics-Pages...0Rods%20VI.htm

Paulyy

I guess it depends the conditions the motor will be used in. I bet you can get a few 500hp dyno queen runs from the rods, but i dont expect them to last that long,

George D

HP is calculated from TQ.

Sure, not that easy though: http://www.epi-eng.com/piston_engine...and_torque.htm

Good read.

sherry66

I would advise against this having just lost a newly built 3L turbo engine when one of the Rarst rods let go. This was with just a couple of hundred miles on the engine and at the time the car was on the rollers being set up for fuelling under no load at 2000 rpm. Two holes in the sump, hole in the side of block which bent the balance shaft and fortunately the only damage to the head was two bent valves from the loose piston.
The only saving grace was I had a 16v turbo built up ready to slot straight in which is running in lovely (steel bores, je pistons and aftermarket rods). Just not worth the risk in my expensive experience.

V2Rocket

bear in mind that even the newest set of 951 rods is 25+ years old and has seen who knows what kind of lifespan/stress.
when you can get brand new, stronger rods that weigh 30-40% less for $1000 or less...why wouldn't you?

let the 951 rods trickle down to the NA racer guys, but for the turbo crowd "while youre in there" why gamble?