Pauter or Carrillo?
 

I think everyone agrees that Carrillo are the best aftermarket rods available but the Pauter rods are significantly cheaper. Has anyone heard of any problems with the Pauter rods?

Re: Pauter or Carrillo?
 

I don't agree that Carrillo rods are the best. I have only seen two types of rods break in a Porsche engine without some other previous problem ( lack of oil, broken piston, etc.). Titanium rods that were used beyond their suggested life and Carrillo rods. They seem to break at the small end and that seems to happen with no warning. When the small breaks on a connecting rods it saws the engine in half. Not good!! I never recommend Carrillo rods in my engines. I've heard nothing but good things about Pauter rods but have no personal experience with them.
I must admit however that I have seen Porsche rod bolts fail in overrevved engines and 3.2 and 3.3 engine.

Henry, what's your opinion on the Pauter rods?

I've searched the web for failures and I can't find any. The only relavent info I found talked about a motor wreck where the only good parts left were the Pauter rods.

My concern as an engineer is they just don't look right. I can see an H-beam or an I-beam, but a plus-beam?

I know that Jerry Woods uses Carrillo rods in his race builds. I would buy the Carrillos. The Pauter rods can't be much less. Unless they are half the $ why not play it safe and go with the rods that have a following.

George

My experiences with Carillo have been kind of sketchy... hit or miss customer service...then they blame everything but their product as contributing to a failure... call them and no returned calls.... I (we) stopped calling carillo years ago

We have Pauter rods in numerous high powered engines..3.6 turbo 8600rpm redline 700+ horsies

500hp 3.2 turbos.... lesser redlines..... bullet proof con rods..


Im an engineer.... I also wondered about the non conventional geometry of Pauter rods They work, and I will continue to use Pauters..

There's about a $700 difference that's why I'm looking at the Pauter rods. I looked at their website and they have some good reasons for their design.

I heard, but have not investigated, that Pauter no longer uses ARP rod bolts, but another rod bolt. I am curious why. Cost? Quality?

$700? So the Pauters are about half price of the Carrillos? Sure, I'd look into it then too!

George

EBS sells Pauter rods for $1100 and Pelican sells Carrillos for $1775. You could probably find them cheaper somewhere else but if Pelican sells it, I don't look elsewhere. ;)

That's funny. I have thought just the same thing!

Unless you're building a high-stress race motor, I don't recommend deviating from the factory rods.

-Wayne

Now there is a safe reply..

beside simple economics, and bragging rights.. why not upgrade?

answer to a question that wasnt asked....

Has anyone used these con rods?

The good thing about aftermarket rods is the fact that they are NEW. If you build an engine from unknown parts that you don't know the history of, it is a crapshoot. While you can have your parts professionally examined to ensure that they are crack free, it isn't a guarantee that they haven't seen some abuse that is internal to the material and that will show up under high stress conditions.

I think that Wayne is correct, if you are talking about a rebuild on a street engine that you know (you have driven for several ten thousand miles etc.).

Along the same lines, I replaced my bad stock starter with an aftermarket high torque/lightweight starter. It wasn't because I 'needed' such a unit but mainly because it is NEW. ;)

George

I'm shooting for 500+fwhp which is one reason I'm going to aftermarket rods. The other reason I discovered after tearing down my engine is that one rod has a smaller piston end width than the others (I doubt the weights are the same). I knew the engine had lost a piston, that's why the PO installed 98mm pistons.

How much lighter was the high torque starter? I see Pelican has these and it seems like I can shed a few pounds while increasing reliability.

Porsche rods were/are some of the best available in our 20/25 year old engines.

If you are rebuilding from the ground up and looking for some added spin, a quality, lighter rod isn't going to hurt.

Hard to find anything bad said about Pauter rods.

I used Pauters, going with the sales pitch that 6 Pauters weighted the same as 5 OEM Porcshe rods. Since I was using 3.2 rods and crank it was also good to have the rod bolts included for the $1100 @ EBS. That virtually took $700 right off the top of the new 74.4 crank price.

is this when you are in reverse?

Right - I think that the added benefit of aftermarket rods really isn't smart economy, unless you have a crank without rods, and need to buy some anyways. I'm not sure what the costs of 3.2 rods are these days ($100 a rod maybe?), but if you buy a set of used rods and then have them remachined back to straight, then it could cost more than a set of regular aftermarket rods. If you already have the rods, I'd say don't bother tossing out your old rods. However, if you need a set of rods, you might as well buy the Pauter or Carrillo rods. I have not heard any bad things about either. I think that Carrillo is owned by JE Pistons now?

-Wayne

Andy, I was planning to use a variable wastegate so I could limit boost in first gear with the ECU, I'll probably limit boost in reverse also, so I would have less than 500hp in reverse.:)

Ask Bruce Anderson what he thinks of Pauter rods?

I dare ya:)

Chris