the more and more I read about stock rods breaking, the more convinced I am about changing it out. I had good luck with my HC S1 and stock bore wiseco, but now that I went with a S2, Im starting to worry. I dont drag race, but I dont baby the thing either. When the stock rods go, is it because of high revs, lots of racing or just a random thing?

 

If you have got away with a stock rod so far and had no problems then IMO I would count your self lucky and get her swapped over now. I am aware it is not a cheap exercise, but talking from experience it will cost a lot more when that rod does let go and takes out the barrell,piston, and engine cases with it. My 686 let go with no warning, after 26hours of use and gave no prior warning.
Hey Fourjs The modifications to the stock carbs basicaly involve fitting larger needle and seats(yamaha 660 grizzly parts work because of the single carb fitment) and drilling out the fuel feed line between the two carbs. One of the problems with the fuel flow is the tank feeds the LHS carb first which has the smaller main and then feeds the RHS which under certain conditions can starve the RHS of fuel which inturn can cause a lean condition. From what I understand this will not occur until you go over about 185 mains. This obviously will depend on your engine mods and riding altitude.

Gav

 

If you Rev the Raptor consistantly above about 6500 rpms, the rod begins to fatigue at the oil hole on the wrist pin. Metal fatigue is tiny cracks that form. Once they form, they continue to grow until failiure. Each time the bike revs high, many more cracks form. It will give no warning, and it will break when you are hauling *** whichs causes a lot of collateral damage.

The reason is that the rod is made of a brittle cast material, and there is not much meat around the wrist pin. You need to use a forged or machined rod if you want reliablity.

You can get away with a stock rod if you baby the bike. But who does that? If your bike is not hopped up, it doesn't make power much past 6500 rpms so you have shifted by then and it is not a problem.

 

Compared to having a local shop tear down and assemble the motor, you are only talking about the cost of shipping to have an expert do it instead. The other guys are right, go ahead and do the rod while you are upgrading. I ran the crap out of a stock rod in a high compression 686 and never had a problem but there are enough horror stories to convince me that I was lucky.

 

so would you guys go with a new crank/rod wiseco setup or just a carillo rod on the stock crank?

 

hot-rods is the only one to give you a new crank, otherwise you ahve a few chocie on new rods

barker
carillo
falicon
and some others

 

Wiseco doesnt make any rods or cranks, HotRods does. It's a separate company and a sister to HotCams, Wiseco is simply the distributor.

Beware the e-bay rods, I've seen a few that look like carillo but arent.

 

Wiseco and Hotrods have gone separate ways.

 

I hope they don't go separate ways in my bike. I have a hot rod and wiseco crank.

 

The cranks and rods for all of the raptor 660 applications and everything four stroke since the 400ex have been hotrods products, with wiseco as the distributor. All of the two stroke products offered on wiseco's site carry the hotrods brand name and have for a good number of years.