Budget/eBay head studs
ARP studs may be expensive, overpriced? Probably not, lots of R&D goes into quality fastener production. China could make bolts out of Hershey bars and look the same, from my experience they would be just as durable too.
I feel the ARP LS hardware is inflated. You can get studs of the exact same material for an SBF or gen1 SBC for $100ish. Yet the LS1 studs are $300? Doesn't make sense to me. I will say ARP bolts are cheaper and seem to be working very well.
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It makes sense to me. The LS became so popular, everyone has to have one (well not everyone but you get the point), that the manufacturers can take advantage and price gouge. It has happened with a lot of LS parts.. pistons.. electric water pumps.. head studs.. etc.
I live in Australia and the ARP studs are $500 for me over here because of our poor exchange rate and the taxes/freight costs. I'm not paying $500 for head studs, just for the theory of it. Accept that much, then they will price gouge even further. If the chinas are no good (which i doubt, as so many people run them without issue) i will just use an oem bolt set.
"Price gouging definition, an act or instance of charging customers too high a price for goods or services, especially when demand is high and supplies are limited"
I live in Australia and the ARP studs are $500 for me over here because of our poor exchange rate and the taxes/freight costs. I'm not paying $500 for head studs, just for the theory of it. Accept that much, then they will price gouge even further. If the chinas are no good (which i doubt, as so many people run them without issue) i will just use an oem bolt set.
"Price gouging definition, an act or instance of charging customers too high a price for goods or services, especially when demand is high and supplies are limited"
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Just to add, i'm all for USA made parts.. and will choose USA made 99% of the time. I don't like china stuff. But manufacturers need to keep it fair or they will eventually end up losing to china entirely.
Vendors need to understand price gouging IS why we go to china for parts. The greedy bastards get what they deserve when they mark up a part 300% IMO. If they can sell them for $100 and make a profit still... WTF do we put up with a %300 price gouge? I boycott that product personally. Unfortunately I do still use their bolt kit as I don't feel its so unreasonable and don't have many other options.
You can buy the 7/16 ARP nuts for $7 a side new online. I'd run those on my china studs personally as the china nuts deform pretty bad. And the stress tests indicate a factory bolt is just as good as a china stud tensile strength wise. studs a bit better by design, but I bet the margin of improvement over a new factory bolt is minimal if any. I actually picked up some of those nascar nuts mentioned earlier. great deal! They look beefy! And last time Speedmaster had a sale I picked up thier LS stud kit.
You can buy the 7/16 ARP nuts for $7 a side new online. I'd run those on my china studs personally as the china nuts deform pretty bad. And the stress tests indicate a factory bolt is just as good as a china stud tensile strength wise. studs a bit better by design, but I bet the margin of improvement over a new factory bolt is minimal if any. I actually picked up some of those nascar nuts mentioned earlier. great deal! They look beefy! And last time Speedmaster had a sale I picked up thier LS stud kit.
It's not all about price gouging. Quality American made products cost more for a few reasons. Number one, there is a lot of R&D that goes into the design and testing of these products, china simply produces a copy and ends there. Secondly when you buy those true American made parts, your paying some other Americans $28/hr salary, not some 11yr old Chinese kids $0.28/hr salary. I'm not knocking anyone who buys Chinese parts, sometimes that is the only way for us car enthusiasts to afford our hobbies, but then again, how many car enthusiasts work for the companies that do supply good quality American made car parts.
It's not all about price gouging. Quality American made products cost more for a few reasons. Number one, there is a lot of R&D that goes into the design and testing of these products, china simply produces a copy and ends there. Secondly when you buy those true American made parts, your paying some other Americans $28/hr salary, not some 11yr old Chinese kids $0.28/hr salary. I'm not knocking anyone who buys Chinese parts, sometimes that is the only way for us car enthusiasts to afford our hobbies, but then again, how many car enthusiasts work for the companies that do supply good quality American made car parts.
And I don't personally mind paying a little extra for a well made product locally. What I do mind is a greedy company marking their product up over 300% because of supply and demand. If they charged the same as they did for their standard small block hardware, I'd have bought 6-7 sets of them by now at least. So would MANY others IMO. In the end they would sell 10 fold as many products and make more money if they weren't greedy bastards. Maybe I'm wrong. There could be a reason the LS fasteners are 300% more. If so... sorry ARP!
Last edited by Forcefed86; Aug 6, 2020 at 08:42 AM.
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ARP has a video around addressing this kind of argument. They basically tell you to go buy the cheapo's and don't bother debating the merits of their products. Because if you don't buy their products someone else will and you're not the person they target to sell to anyway. They really aim for the guy with a forged engine who wants peace of mind on the head studs and doesn't mind dropping $250 on an engine with $7000 in parts in it and not the average Joe with a SBE LS, a chinese turbo and junk yard rubber hoses.
You pay for their quality control. They never let tooling wear out, they inspect and test every single piece they make like 7 times before it gets put in a package. Their factory is clean, there is no junk lying around, no unswept dust, no grease and grime anywhere. It's very impressive to look at their operation.
Their cost is in the assurance of getting well inspected fasteners that have a much higher likelyhood of not failing. Are there equally strong china fasteners for much cheaper? Absolutely. But they do let more defects through and the difference between .001% of products being defective and .1% is a lot of blown head gaskets, let alone defect rates of 1% or more.
They are pretty up front about the high redundancy inspection process of theirs being what you're really paying for.
It's not far off though on some things. I got a set of 5.3 ARP head bolts from Summit for $90...
You pay for their quality control. They never let tooling wear out, they inspect and test every single piece they make like 7 times before it gets put in a package. Their factory is clean, there is no junk lying around, no unswept dust, no grease and grime anywhere. It's very impressive to look at their operation.
Their cost is in the assurance of getting well inspected fasteners that have a much higher likelyhood of not failing. Are there equally strong china fasteners for much cheaper? Absolutely. But they do let more defects through and the difference between .001% of products being defective and .1% is a lot of blown head gaskets, let alone defect rates of 1% or more.
They are pretty up front about the high redundancy inspection process of theirs being what you're really paying for.
It's not far off though on some things. I got a set of 5.3 ARP head bolts from Summit for $90...
Sorry but it doesn't cost 3x as much to cut an M11 2.0 metric thread on one side. If you have the tooling, why would the cost be any different? Seems like price gouging, plain and simple.
ARP head studs around $600
Bore size is not much more on a Duramax. Yet the piston cost is... I under stand its a special forging, but its almost 3K for a set of forged pistons... Same thing for forged rods...
I Tried to get a 1 time discount though my company. NOPE!!! They have what ever set up for vendors and that's it.
