I've had trouble with rods being up to snuff. I bought a set of Manley Hemi I-beam rods a number of years ago from a SS Hemi racer. They were still new in the box, but when my machinist/engine builder took them apart he found the rod bolts were galled in the threads and under the bolt heads. These rods are around $1600/set new now. I think I paid around $1300 for them and spent another $1k on new rod bolts, ring dowels, and machine work to fix them. For that money, I could have bought Carrillo's with CARR bolts.

I've had problems with other rods for 440s that I've bought as well. One set had the hardness down around 25 HRC, basically the annealed hardness of 4340. Rather disappointing.