Diesel Engine Fractured Connecting Rods.

Hey, welcome to Charlie's Garage. For today's diesel training video I wanted to talk about fractured connecting rods. So fractured connecting rods are ones that are cast as one piece and then basically the rod cap is basically snapped off which makes the surfaces very uneven and cracked. Now this is not a great example because they should be way rougher and more cracked than you in the video here and the reason why they look a little smoother than they're supposed to is from students over the years putting these caps on backwards. Every time you torque a fractured connecting rod cap on backwards it damages the connecting rod and the cap. Ultimately just torquing it down one time in the wrong direction will completely run a fractured rod and cap and require replacement. Of course since these are just training aids we make the students take them off and flip them around and put them back on but this is what happens is that you get a what should be a really fractured rough surface that matches and lines up with the surface that it got broken off of and forms a really good seal but when you put them on backwards you take the fractures and you just compress them together and you end up flattening them and now you're going to have an out of round connecting rod bore and that's going to affect your bearings and how they sit in them so ultimately when you take an engine apart check your connecting rods and if they are fractured you want to make sure before you tighten any connecting rod nuts or bolts that you double check and make sure that you have it on the right direction you will destroy them instantly.