The sport compact market continues to evolve, and the folks at CP-Carrillo are at the forefront of developing new products on a regular basis to service those enthusiasts looking to build more horsepower into their four-and six-cylinder engines. They’ve put together a number of new connecting rod designs and pistons that are on display this week at the SEMA show here in Las Vegas.

“We have two new EcoBoost Ford connecting rods for the 2.0L four-cylinder and 3.5L V6 engines, along with an HD connecting rod for the Subaru that is good for up to at least 1,500 horsepower – right now we have guys that are building up to 1,200 horsepower right now,” says CP-Carrillo’s Barry Deane. The stock EcoBoost connecting rods are made from powdered metal and are only good for approximately 500 horsepower, and Deane says that it’s very easy to exceed that mark and have a rod failure, especially when customers start to use nitrous on top of the turbochargers.

One notable change made during the EcoBoost rod’s design phase was to change the piston pin dimension from the stock 22.5mm size to more common 22mm pin size. “Only Mazda and Ford use the 22.5mm size, and we had trouble getting a good quality piston pin in the 22.5mm size,” he says. The 22mm pin is used in engines like the Toyota 2JZ and Mistubishi 4G63 engine; platforms that have been scienced out through brutal abuse, so the change was welcome and easy to make. The V6 connecting rod has a very large crank pin, and a lot of weight on the big end, so the company has engineered a unique double-step at the big end of the connecting rod to keep the material where it’s most needed.

Both EcoBoost connecting rods are available  with Carrillo’s proprietary CARR fasteners, which use a special MT35N stainless material. The CARR fasteners have a memory, unlike other materials, so that when it is stretched, it will return to its original dimension. In fact, he says that they have customers who have used them for five seasons and through multiple freshen-ups without failure. Customers end up changing them for piece of mind, not because of failure or over-stretching.

In addition, they have developed an aluminum connecting rod for the VR38 Nissan GT-R platform that uses H11 tool steel fasteners, and uses a big-block Chevrolet 2.200-inch crank pin and .927-inch Chevrolet piston pin size. This allows the customer to purchase common bearings and pins.

The company’s CP division has a number of new piston designs on display, including a B-series Honda forging that offers extra material in places where the company has found it to be beneficial to performance, especially in the pin boss area. CP-Carrillo’s Freddy Valenzuela says that they are hard at work developing an all-new HD series line of pistons that are targeted at forced induction customers.

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