pboglio
15+ Year Contributor
- 1,799
- 85
- May 8, 2004
-
Palos Heights,
Illinois
I recently did the ARP head stud install (2g, 11mm kit) on a 2g with the head still on the car. Pretty easy; pull valve cover off, take one head bolt out ONLY, clean threaded hole with solvent and a rifle brush, replace with new ARP higher capacity stud and moly-lube, torque to spec, then move to the next bolt. I used Loc-tite blue on the block side threads, just in case. ARP recommends 70 ft-lbs torque with their Moly-lube, I used 75 ft-lbs.
People have mentioned having to grind the stud washer to fit around the valve spring. Now, the valve springs on a few holes do interfere, but if you FIRST lay down the washer and THEN drop the head stud into the hole, its no problem. Using a magnetic pickup/wand makes things much easier, you don't want to be dropping washers and nuts into the oil return passages in the block. There is ample room for the head stud nut and a 12 point 1/2" socket to clear any obstructions including valve springs, everything is a bolt on affair.
A few things to note. The 2g head bolts are 3/8" in diameter for most of the shank length. ARP 2g studs are 11mm. According to ARP's chart, their 3/8" head studs are rated for a Preload of ~11,000 lbs, the 11mm studs @ 16,000 lbs. Thats a pretty good increase in clamping preload.
Reason for the swap was that I was getting some major coolant pushing into the overflow bottle under high boost driving, causing some seriously high coolant temps (213*F). Further evidence of a compromised head gasket was heat scorch/corrosion marks on 4 of the 10 head studs, mostly the inner bolts. The stock head bolts just weren't cutting it on my 100,000 mile setup with +36 lb/min compressor flow and 21 psi of boost.
The ARP studs have limited my coolant loss to about 2-3 ounces or so and greatly reduced my engine overheating. Seems like every time I heat cycle the engine it pushes less and less coolant, who knows. This is all on the stock headgasket as well, which has probably already been damaged. Ideally, I would have replaced the head gasket too, but for $88 and 2 hours worth of work, I had nothing to lose. Cheers.
People have mentioned having to grind the stud washer to fit around the valve spring. Now, the valve springs on a few holes do interfere, but if you FIRST lay down the washer and THEN drop the head stud into the hole, its no problem. Using a magnetic pickup/wand makes things much easier, you don't want to be dropping washers and nuts into the oil return passages in the block. There is ample room for the head stud nut and a 12 point 1/2" socket to clear any obstructions including valve springs, everything is a bolt on affair.
A few things to note. The 2g head bolts are 3/8" in diameter for most of the shank length. ARP 2g studs are 11mm. According to ARP's chart, their 3/8" head studs are rated for a Preload of ~11,000 lbs, the 11mm studs @ 16,000 lbs. Thats a pretty good increase in clamping preload.
Reason for the swap was that I was getting some major coolant pushing into the overflow bottle under high boost driving, causing some seriously high coolant temps (213*F). Further evidence of a compromised head gasket was heat scorch/corrosion marks on 4 of the 10 head studs, mostly the inner bolts. The stock head bolts just weren't cutting it on my 100,000 mile setup with +36 lb/min compressor flow and 21 psi of boost.
The ARP studs have limited my coolant loss to about 2-3 ounces or so and greatly reduced my engine overheating. Seems like every time I heat cycle the engine it pushes less and less coolant, who knows. This is all on the stock headgasket as well, which has probably already been damaged. Ideally, I would have replaced the head gasket too, but for $88 and 2 hours worth of work, I had nothing to lose. Cheers.