i know there are tons of chinese cranks and rods in use out there. personally i'm just scared of them, the rods especially. not that premium parts can't/don't fail but i would think using a quality usa forged/billet/machined rod would be money well spent when you consider all the collateral damage that can occur when a rod fails. problem is there aren't a lot of choices for usa made rods and while the machine work that some are doing in the us should be superior you're still working with an imported blank

personally the only chinese part i have is a crank i've yet to use. the rods i have/used are BME, manley and oliver

Vern you didn't play around, that's a real mess you made there. was just looking at a friends roundy engine the other day that he did something similar. callies ultra lite crank, oliver rods the works. didn't get real far into it but looks like a bearing failed and the engine had been recently gone through. no signs of other oiling distress just a bearing that failed and he ran it till it pitched the rod