Scott, I've seen the rods and cranks in person and those I've had my hands on appear to start from the same core forging. I maybe wrong about that vs the most current offerings and I'm not knocking the company either way. Still I don't see any use of thier product lines for my interests at this time. For me at that point of cost I'm up for spending more for an actual US made item and supporting companies that consider that important. If I'm screwing a budget 302 together I'm probably going Scat unless quality drops even further. Should that occur or there be no other option is the only way I see myself ever sending Molnar money for China parts that expensive.
I can also tell you I turned down a set of Molnar rods at FERR on a generous discount for a cash sale. Now I considered it knowing they are nice pieces but I just couldn't do it, hence this thread....
Tom's beam design, as Brent said, is completely different than any other H beam. Again, his design, not the cookie cutter H beam like Scat, Eagle, Manley, Engine Pro, Cat, etc...all basically the same. Personally, I'm not so concerned about Chinese vs US. This is a little political, but my problem with Chinese products in America was the fact that they diluted the quality of the market, regardless of the cost, and there are companies that give no consideration to what cheap knockoffs do to the industry (like ProComp, now Speedmaster) but when a product is a quality product, frankly, I don't care where i comes from. Japan, China, Germany, Taiwan, Argentina, TimBuckTwo... makes no difference to me and Tom's parts are extremely high quality so I really don't care where they're made. JMO.
To add: I won't use a Scat rod out of the box, nor any other generic import rod. Loosen the bolts and tighten them again to torque, or better yet stretch, and see how round they are. I guarantee you they'll go out of round between half a thou to a full thou and they tighten up at the parting line. The ends are not machined, they're belt sanded and no where near flat or straight. Not the case with one of Tom's rods but those are the little details that not many know about or bother to check.
