bnoble

I was looking at my rods today and I currently have a dilemma. Eagle's H-beams have alignment sleeves on the rod caps that press fit into the rod body.. easy enough to separate with a bench splitter, not so while in the engine. Does anyone have any tips for pulling apart these rods while they're on the crank? I'm going to be mocking up my short block several times while i'm clearancing the block (383) and I'm worried about doing damage to the rods or crank if I'm repeatedly struggling to pull the caps back off.

Thanks for any help,
Bryan

jwscab

can you put the bolts back in a couple of threads, then tap them to push the rod up away from the crank? this should get em loose enough to pull apart I would think. I have to do that sometimes with standard rods, throw the nuts on them, and use a rubber hammer, works well as long as the bolts don't push out.

jwscab

oh, the other thing that works sometimes, take a wooden dowel, and hammer down on the bottom of the pistons(with the block upside down, obviously). Usually need to do that on motor's I'm breaking down with alot of miles, or damaged rods/cranks/siezed bores that don't want to spin. tough to get to both sides of the piston sometimes. but it works well.

bnoble

Rethreading the bolts.. why didn't I think of that? I'll bet that'll work fine, the caps come off fairly easy in the vice so if I take it easy I think I could tap them off like that without any trouble.

Dr. Pepper

Take it easy when tapping on the bolts like this. Make sure you have plenty of thread engagement and go lightly. I have seen someone damage the threads on a bolt before by only engaging one or two threads and then giving it a good tap trying to push the rod away from the cap.

Typically I lightly tap the sides of the caps with an upward motion. It takes a little patience but the halves eventually separate. So far I haven't had any issues with distoring the rods or damaging the crank or bearings. Again, a key point is to go easy to not damage the parts.

bnoble

If I back them out slightly and lightly tap on them I think it should be fine. I only need to get the cap off the rod slightly to disengage the alignment sleeves. I'll take it easy and see how it goes.