200 2.5 connecting rod, heat discolored bad, thoughts?

[LakeFever]

Surfaces seem ok nothing galled all smooth still. Wanted to check with you guys first see what you think of this rod. Safe to run?

[rock]

As long as the ends are good and it's straight.

Rock

[VkingMike]

I've taken rods out of good motors that are that color. It's something with the coating. I'd be more concerned if the bearing ends were purple, which they don't appear to be.

[LakeFever]

Four stroke press pins look like this after heating so I figured it was fine but I don’t know jack about these rods. If they are heat treated or whatever. For what it’s worth this was my second tight holes rod. Very slight discoloring here and I added a pic of the end of the one above it’s the blueish date I say purply one

[skialot2]

They look fine. I would use them. They look like every rod in every merc outboard I have ever taken apart.

[David - WI]

Right, because they bury them in copper or something so they harden the ends but not the beam when they're heat treat.

[LakeFever]

Good info thanks gents. I did some further investigating last night trying to understand the nature of these rods. I reached out to Jay Smith who provided excellent advice on how to check the rods before installing and discovered two of these rods are unusable. The cracked cap doesn’t set down perfectly concentric. There is a very, very slight offset at the crack inside the bearing race area I can catch it with my thumbnail. The two bad rods are not the discolored ones either so I got super lucky there or it would have been bye bye crank and motor in short order. Fortunately I have a couple spare motors so I’ll be tearing one down today to get some more rods from.