I have nothing against saving money.   Not every engine needs billet rods and custom pistons.  Cutting corners on critical components makes you feel good...for awhile.   That good feeling goes away when your engine spins a bearing or dumps oil out the rear seal.  These engines are ancient.  Most of them need serious machining.  Many of them have mismatched parts. I have close to $5,000 in the rebuild of my near stock TBird engine.  I made this investment so I don't have to worry the next time I decide to make a little power.   Can you build an engine on the cheap?  Sure.  You will make it to the car show most of the time.   That is not what I want.  I want an engine that will pull like a YBlock should and stay together longer than it's next AAA ride.  

even a below average engine rebuilder would discard any rod bolts with damaged threads. as for rebuilt cores hear in bc canada rebuilders would never weld  case iron cranks. ,they would resize all conrods,and only reuse hardware  incuding rod bolts that are in very good cond. the main reason no crank welding is the y block ford engine was used excusivly in industrial aps. when you state you used sand paper to refurbish cylenerr walls, ridge reamer to take out ridge  is probably the result of young hot orders cutting corners to re use junk.
rebuilders and machine shops hear would never turn our components or complete short blocks or long blocks relative with what one gets from your remarks. we in western canada and wa state used these engines industrial as well as restorers. any one that reads this site would get good info from the hp group and those  who just want a nice 55/57 bird that runs well and is dependable,or hotrods your 292 or 312,later being way more pricey.pick your spot hear to follow in-between increases cost and risk

Avoiding catastrophic failure is not the only reason for replacing rod bolts. I have disassembled my share of Y Blocks. Most of these engines have been rebuilt numerous times.  Many are a "parts soup" of mismatched rods and pistons, welded cranks, used lifters and whatever happened to be hanging around at the time. Try buying a ridge reamer these days.  The last time I did, the kid behind the counter at the local parts store thought I was talking about 4 wheel drive.  My bet is your pistons were driven out with a breaker bar,   I would also bet the rod bolt threads are a mess and the rod nuts don't tighten uniformly. You can rebuild an engine by honing the cylinders with sand paper.  I've done it myself.   If you want an engine that performs and lasts, do the job right.

missed my point, super charged 312 drag racing yes i would chang rod bolts and many other parts. but most of of the users  of y blocks  do not see the stress that a supper charged dragster does. most readers doing there engines for classic cars need help with comen centse restoration regarding there engine rebuilds.wher and when the engines are used  is important especially simple things like heat riser valves,re use of rocker armes and pushrods. the ford ys are tough , but have some issues that can be over come with the info on this site and a look in the mirror asking your self what will i be using this car for. i do look up to the group taking big power out of the ys. but for the average user not well spent dollars

I personally suffered a broken rod bolt in my supercharged 312 in my drag car.  I don't have any record of how many 1/4 mile passes were on the rods when it finally let go.   When the bolt broke, the bottom end of the rod opened up and disconnected itself from the crankshaft, but the other bolt didn't break, just bent.  It knocked a hole in the block side and also broke a cylinder wall.  I did drive it up on the truck anyway.  I saved the crankshaft, cam,  cylinder heads, oil pan (had to patch it), and timing cover.

John - "The Hoosier Hurricane"

I HAVE yet to see a broken con rod bolt  from a stock y block, even with a bearing failure from no oil,usually the rod breaks. i do agree with others if you ar looking at7000 rpm replace resize 

Great reply Ted! I know you're a busy man! and we all appreciate you taking the time to help us out... In my case with these rod bolts. My experience saved the engine.what if a novice would have been putting his first engine together, and didn't know about this, he would have spun the bearings and blew the engine up! And he would have never known what went wrong...

I doubt that resizing the rods would be the reason you ran out of threads.  A worse case scenario for rod resizing would be the total length of the rod bolt hole (includes both the rod and the cap) being 0.012” shorter.  When resizing connecting rods on my end, I typically only shorten up the total length no more than 0.004” and that’s a result of taking 0.002” off the rods and 0.002” off of the caps.
 
In your case, it could have simply been the wrong part number bolt set for the application, a mis-packaged set of bolts, or a set of bolts that were manufactured wrong.  It’s good that you picked up on the threaded part of the bolts being too short when you did

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

Great reply Ted! I had a bad experience with ARP rod bolts. When I was installing them for final assembly. Upon torquing them down, I was not getting a good feeling from my torque wrench. (I use an old snap-on wrench with dial indicator, so I can get a feel for the bolts). They didn't feel right ,so I checked the rod bolts and I came to find out, they weren't threaded enough up the bolt. So I had to put washers underneath the head of the bolts. To make sure I had enough threads grabbing with the nut. I don't know if this was caused by having the rods resized?
Or I just didn't have the correct bolts. Long story short, if I wasn't a seasoned engine builder ,I wouldn't haven't noticed the rod bolts were not getting the right crush! I would have spun a bearing!
I called ARP about it and didn't get much satisfaction. So beware of ARP bolts.

I have EBU rods luckily I ordered the correct # 154-6005 thanks again