rod bolts

I have purchased a 3.2 to install in my mondial. supposed to be very low miles but I feel that I should check rod and main bearings and do a leak down before I go to the effort of installation. My question is can the rod bolts be removed for inspection then retorqued. or should the nuts be replaced or both bolt and nut replaced? thanks for any help

 

If it's separated from the gearbox then yes the rods and mains can be seen on one side but in order to actually check the shells it requires the crank, rods, and Pistons being removed. The rod torque can be checked but I recommend against it as they are designed to be torqued and stretched into place just once. Doing so again may compromise it's strength. My best advice I can offer is to do the leak down only, and if it checks out ok just run it. Checking the bottom end without tearing it apart and replacing things such as rod bolts (minimum) isn't worth it unless you want to perform a full rebuild.

 

I've been doing this for 40 years....whenever i split a rod, I ALWAYS toss the bolts and especially the nuts, using old ONLY for resizing machining requirements.
Make sure the new nuts have a pronounced and noticeable radius at bottom of slot or reject them until they do!
Crack check all new parts at an FAA certed facility..
good luck...

 

Same with me, although nothing really would speak again reusing "normal" components. These really are not the components to save money on ....

Bolts of the stretching kind should be discarded anyway, since they (most) are intended for one-time use only. You can recognize by the form, the shaft part (without thread) typically has a lower diameter than the outer diameter of the thread.

Aside this, I would not disassemble an engine without any indication that this is necessary, except in case of a full scale restoration of a car with unknown history.