Shot peen Rods
What does this mean???

 

It's a way of strengthening your rods. It's sorta like sandblasting but with steel BB's...atleast that's what I understand.

 

so if I buy brand new eagle rods I wont need to buy new rods right??

 

"so if I buy brand new eagle rods I wont need to buy new rods right??"

Huh? If you buy brand new Eagle rods, you will already have BOUGHT new rods.

 

YUPYUP!!

 

When you are shot peening you are evening out all the little imperfections in the metal billet. Metal isn't always 100% perfect, so when you shot peen you get closer to having flawless metal, and of course flaws can cause big catastrphies under extreme stress, like if you were running very high compression or forced induction etc. If you are going to have your engine apart you might as well have it balanced too, more HP there and a higher redline.

 

I am not sure but I believe shot peening is w/ glass BBs, maybe it can be either but I know at school we have a shot peening machine that uses glass beads

 

thats a media blasting machine for cleaning off metal parts, not the same thing.

 

Argh... when you SHOT-PEEN rods it puts a hard skin on them, making it much harder for cracks to form. Next question...

 

Sorry for nitpicking you, bro, but it doesn't strengthen rods; it makes them less weak. Let's keep it in perspective...

 

Every failed rod starts with a minute crack. By shot-peening the rods, you create a higher surface tension, greatly increasing the stress needed to cause a tiny crack.[doesn't strengthen rods; it makes them less weak[/QUOTE] Exactly.

 

I always thought shot peen meant to lighten the rod by shaving off metal, but im not sure though..

 

Nope, it means just what the name implies. Ever seen a ball peen hammer? That's how they used to do it. They'd take the ball end of the hammer and peen the surface manually. Now, they just peen the surface with ball bearings, i.e. shot; does the same thing, it's more consistent and it faster.

As the guy said above, rod breaks start with cracks. When you put a hard skin over the rod by peening it, it makes it much harder for a crack to spread. Given two sets of otherwise identical rods, the one that ISN'T PEENED will ALWAYS break first. The shot peened rod isn't any stronger than the unpeened rod, it just isn't as weak.

Look, if you guys are worried about your rods snapping, here's BDC's answer. A pic is worth a 1000000 words, right?

 

Not meaning to be picky but the confusion of words does need to be clarified. STRONG and WEAK are opposite terms. If you move away from one, you move towards the other. If you move away from being weak ("it becomes less weak"), then you move towards being strong ("it becomes stronger").

If a shot-peened rod can withstand the same amount of stress for a longer time than an identical rod that hasn't been shot-peened, then the shot-peening DID increase the strength. That strength can be used to handle a higher load for the same time, or the same load for a longer time, but it IS stronger.

 

V good, spyder!!! I'm glad to see there's at least one other 'thinker' on this site. My answer was directed at ppl that din't know what shot peening means, and I was trying to explain it in terms they would understand.

It's a common myth that shot peening increases the strength of a component. Wrong! All it does is give the surface of the component a tough skin and tends to remove any stress points on the surface that could possibly be a crack starter.

So, once again, if two identical sets of rods [except one set was shot peened and the other not] were revved until something broke, the untreated ones would ALWAYS break first, thus giving the ILLUSION of lesser strength than the treated ones. In fact, the untreated ones simply broke from unnecessary stress cracks; the metal in them being every bit as good as the other treated ones. They weren't actually weaker to begin with, just more prone to failure in the end.

Perhaps a better view of shot peening is to simply think of it as stopping the rods from being weak, and forgetting the 'strength' myth altogether. Are we all clear now???