I searched first and didn't find any mention of the product.

I emailed ARP yesterday asking about rod bolts and I got a response. They gave me the part number 202-6006 and they have them in stock. I ordered mine today from a local shop for less than $200 which is far less expensive than the Nismo product. These will allow you to take a stock rod VQ35 past 7200rpm with far less risk.
In a month or so I will get the L-Spec TS ECU and have the rev limit set to 7500.



Upon my ARP announcement another fellow member on Maxima.org discovered Ferrea valve/spring/retainer kits for the VQ35.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=349097

 

You're planning to rev to 7500 RPM on the stock rods?

You must be joking.

Then again, the VQ35DE in the 2002 Maxima had beefier rods than the VQ in the Z. Maybe they can take the abuse. I doubt the rods in the Z's VQ can.

 

I second that. Snap like pretzel.

 

It isn't the rods that are the problem to that speed. It is the OE rod bolts. Why else would Nismo and ARP sell stronger replacement ones?

The rods in the Maxima VQ35 are the exact same part number as the rods in the 350Z.

http://www.z1auto.com/prodmore.asp?m...ine&prodid=924


Also, the 350Z grand am cup cars are revving to near 8k and beefier internals aren't on the approval list.

 

let us know how it goes. im interested in the results. i cant imagine having a 7500redline.

 

Many of us have surged these things well past 9k because of mis shifts and no one that I know of has tossed a rod doing so.

Nissan also had Borg Warner do stress testing on the VQ35 before it was in production. As I was told by someone who worked for Borg Warner, IIRC one of the tests was for a constant 7000rpm at about 300 hours and the thing held up fine.

 

wow... that's cool mate.... thanks for the information once again!

cheers,

richie

 

Thats some good news.

 

The ARP rod bolts have a higher tensile strength and are cheaper than the NISMO ones so they are definately the better option. They have been available for a couple years but they might not have been listed as a 350z part though the bolt is the same.

I heard from a local racer who got info from other 350z racers that:

Stock rod bolts break past ~7200rpm
Stock rods break past ~7400rpm

So i guess you could go a little higher but I wouldnt be going past these limits with stock rods. Going past them once might be ok but you wouldnt want to do it regularly. 7000rpm is ok as the auto zeds rev to that stock from the factory, but your talking about alot higher. With every higher RPM you go the inertial forces increase exponentially. You'd be taking a large risk but if it works i'd love to hear about it.

 

I know it is still a gamble but my bet is that seeing 7500 ocasinally isn't anywhere near as bad as seeing it for almost 3 hours straight like in a Grand Am Cup race. Besides, I mainly want that rev limit as a buffer. Right now I am making power all the way to the 6600 rev limit with my modified OE manifold. I do intend to squeeze more out of it and eventually would like to build power all the way to 7200. But even then the engine will only see those speeds occasionally during a chance encounter on the street and the trips ot the track. I have another engine to use and I may get the rods cryoed and shot peened which will make them about 25+% stronger.

 

any chance of u making a manifold for the Z that'll make power up in the higher revs?

 

I have some ideas for a 350Z IM but I don't have one to play with. They're trickier to deal with and will require alot of flow bench time.

 

I had the same idea a while ago so I contacted a few companies about getting the rods shot-peened and cyro'd but as the rods are Aluminium they do not benefit from such processes as much as other metals. Cyro will stress relieve the rods and not increase strength but shot peening will increase the fatigue resistance. Note that any cryo on rods would null any prior shot peening, so if you decide to cyro make sure its before you shot peen. If you were to buy forged rods, depending on which rods you bought they could be 750% stonger.

 

The OE VQ35 rods aren't aluminum. They're forged steel. It is the pistons that are cast aluminum.

I did mention cryo first before shot peening, so I am aware it will need to be done first. And by relieving stress and increasing the fatigue resistance you essentially gain net strength.

 

If I had the $, I'd have Pauter mill out a set of titanium rods

http://www.pauter.com/titanium.htm

Not as good as GT3's, which I believe are forged titanium, but still twice the strength of steel and 1/3 lighter. Yeah baby!

 

sure if money is no option

SR20DEN - are you going to drop the rods out and have them race prepped? I honestly would not be surprised if the NISMO bolts=ARP

 

No, I am going to install the ARP bolts the first weekend I have them in my posession. I may prep the other set of rods I have in my other engine. And I have also condisdered the same thing about the Nismo being the ARP.

 

If this is correct then your 25% increase in strength should be achievable. Its a relatively cheap process but the main downsides are the cost of labour to pull the engine apart and the time your engine is off the road while the parts are being treated.

Cool, now everyone knows.

 

And in my case it is by far the most cost effective thing to do when I decide to do it. My own labor of dissasembling and reassembling my own spare engine is free. I even have a way to get my rods cryoed for free plus the shipping charges. The only out of pocket expense I will have is the shot peening, another set of ARP bolts for those other rods and a few other odds and ends to put the engine back together. My only downtime would be one weekend at the shop when I swap the engines. However I still may change my plans before then if the next revision of the VQ35 has stronger rods or some other aftermarket alternative comes out. The Pauter rods are really overkill for NA and I want to demonstraight these alternatives for those people like me who aren't going to just throw a bunch of money at a problem to solve it.

I will certainly keep everyone updated on the progress of my project as it goes along.

 

whats really gonna suck is if you do just do the rod bolts, install everything, hit 7500, sling a rod and mess up a perfectly good engine. i really hope that doesnt happen, but why not out rods in too while the engine is apart.