The longer 6.800 rod, was all the rage, many different scenarios, one was it dwelled at top dead center longer, to take advantage of our very poor head flow. The other scenario is it made the rod to stroke ratio better. So it’s all depends on which scenario you believe in. in actuality it doesn’t care what length rod you use. The best engine builder will tell you that, and I believe that and here’s why, when that rage was going on, I was Joneson to go with the longer rod, so after year or better bracket racing, it was time to refresh the motor. So I went with the longer 6.8 rods. On my 462, thinking I was going to pick up hp, I was all excited, when I dyno the motor I was very disappointed it pick up ZERO hp. Was the 6.8 rod a gimmick to get you to buy those rods, I was running SD rods and went to Crower 6.8 rod. Gimmick I don’t really think so, one thing I’ll say, I was able to put 300 runs on that motor, with security of not having a rod failure. The SD rods were good rods, but rod bolt failure was a issue if you didn’t install new rod bolts. Which at time getting harder to get and not cheap, to have installed and check for resizing. Just my experiences. Take it for what ever it’s worth, I think most of all the rpm level was really the saving grace. I only shifted at 5500 rpms. Making 625-650 hp.
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