The V8 Owners Forum -

I thought I should warn folk about the problerm I had tonight while putting the heads back on a mates RV8.

I'm going to ring Real Steel in the morning to let them know as well.

I got a set of standard non stretch bolts and washers for P38 heads. So 6 long bolts and 14 short bolts. The short bolts are spot on. But the long bolts are wrong??

The overall lenght of the loing bolts is fine. But the threads on the long bolts are about 10mm shorter, ie they have not been threaded far enough up the bolt. I nipped the first long bolt down by hand and then noticed that it was about 1mm short of the washer??

I thought it might have been some dirt in the thread, but I had already cleaned threads very well. So I took the bolts out and put them up against the old bolts. This is when I found the problem. Luckily I always have some old bolts in the big tin. But if I had not been on the ball I might have just nipped these down to 68ft/lbs and been none the wiser until startup.

With only the force of me nipping up with a speed brace there was ally in the last thread of the bolt as it hit the deck.

FYI chaps....

Perry

cheers for the warning Pel.

I just told Real Steel. that was the last set they had in stock so they cant check the others from that batch. So there may be a few sets of dodgy head bolts out there??

Hi Perry
so you don't think that 1/4 inch head skim had anything to do with it then?
Mike

Mike!!

Last set of bolts I got, from a LR supplier was the same, well I had 2 packs one pack was ok, the other pack had the shorter threads.
I had some spare APR stud washers that are a lot bigger so I used these to make up the missing mm.
I did order original LR bolts but they did not have stock and sent a pattern bolt, but I can't remember now the make, so look like there are some bad batches out there.

There are definitely some bad ones out there, the stretch bolts in my experience. I did some crude testing ('til destruction), and found some significant differences.

Made by some Spanish company, the eBay vendor assured me they were OK.....

Chris.

Just found the Email, and the ones that was the thread was too short was ALLMAKES its was only the 3 very long ones that was wrong, the other short ones was ALLMAKES and they was fine.

That'll teach you not to use studs Pel

I use ARP studs in my engines that count, but £150 is a bit expensive to spend on an engine that only an experiment, plus if I sell it on I'm not going to get £150 extra for it.

I wont use bolts on my race engines. This was just a head gasket swap on a mates car so replacing with normal bolts.

FYI
I just got a set of stretch bolts from Paddock motor spares for £9.99 and they are fine