L31MaxExpress
I'm Awesome
I finally got around to messing with the passenger side. I found another broken washer on the lower row and the bolt in the center had cracked and came out nearly as a 2 piece bolt. It was also leaking coolant into #6 through the head gasket, there were signs of coolant ash on the spark plug and exhaust valve. I think these bolts stretched when I was messing around in the throttle hard and the heads almost lifted. On the passenger side some of the bolts were nearly loose and others insanely tight to break loose. The driver side had a few that were very tight as well. On the passenger side I actually compared the loose bolts vs tight ones side by side. The loose bolts had stretched and were longer. I am going to say this was completely the fault of crappy quality Jegs head bolts. The ARP studs are much higher quality and I swear the studs weigh 2x what the Jegs head bolts do. The broken areas of the Jegs bolts look super grainulate like they have air pockets in the metal. I have seen better quality Dorman bolts. I straight edged both the block and head and could not fit a 0.002" feeler gauge anywhere. On both banks I was able to slip the head over the lower row of short studs, but ended up having to install the longer studs after the head was in place. I cleaned all 8 pistons off before I installed the heads, inspecting for signs of detonation pitting and the pistons look new. So apparantly 11:1 with good quench will work even with a tiny cam if you can keep the heads on it.
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