Here are only some of my answers..Dufus here is fixated on only the cam?
This was about all the "light rods" they found:
Would have been interesting to see if it was the same rod in the same place. It could have been on the cylinder that keeps popping valve springs
This is about the Valve train...including rod and piston combo. Also what nobody knows apparently but TRD, is it the same cylinder that is failing on all the engines...this is assuming that it is.
It gets complicated, but one reason could be that they have one cylinder that is failing. they use a really weak spring, so the cam not only opens the valve, but the valve keep going deeper into the cylinder before the spring stops the valve. Gives the advantage of more duration for air/fuel to get into the cylinder, and on the other side, it opens longer to get it out. It is like having a bigger cam. downside is the piston can hit the valves if they are in there too far. So they use the lightest piston rod combo they can get away with..less stretching. If they have it isolated to only one cylinder that is causing the problem for whatever reason, not cooling as well or getting enough oil, they fudge a little on the weight, an even lighter piston, and valve, and rod? purely conjecture on my part, but they are dealing with really tight tolerances and they don't need much.
This is what I think that has Bobby doing a cam jig:
Lots of things can make a spring fail, the cam, pushrods, rocker arms, valve studs, the valve and it's keepers, piston/rod clearance, heat, geometry, and also the spring tension, or lack of it and the material it is made from. As you can see, it can be a pretty complicated problem. Not to mention the material everything is made from, thermal expansion values etc. WEIGHT