I bought a rod bolt stretch gauge form Comp Cams tool company, CRS I like it, I don't try to measure the stretch while torquing the bolts, I set the gauge to zero with no pressure on the bolt, one side at a time, and then apply something less than the recommend torque that the rod bolts call for, I torque the bolt on one side and remeasure it. Usually they are not as long as recommended so I increase the torque on the wrench between 2 to 5 ft. lbs. and retorque and remeasure until I get the stretch in the middle of the recommended range, IE with .0057 to .0062 recommended I shoot for .0060 It does take time but I'm happy with the results so far Make sure your gauge reads in .00010, not .0010 range. Some of the rod makers want you to stretch the bolst three times before measuring them for final stretch, I haven't seen any of them vary more than .00010 by doing that I did see 20 ft lbs differences needed to make the length the same on a set of rod bolts in a set of Oliver billet steel rods They must have mixed that set of bolts from two different rod bolt batches I wanted them to replace all of the bolts and they siad no way, it was common for them to see that much differences needed to get them within .0001 They wanted me to use the torque plus so many degrees method instead of uisng torque settings with the rod bolt stretch gauge