I'd guess the China stud quality varies greatly.
I bought mine from Pro Comp a few years ago.
Had my heads off three times.
I torqued them to 80.

Having them on and off so many times, I bought ARP for my updated setup.
The price was painful!

 

Have a set of 2004 & up Alpers brand new in the classifieds

 

Just got some Speedmaster studs from Jegs, the 3 length 97-02 version.

So does everyone agree that 70lbs of torque with ARP lube is the way to go?

 

I just got them installed in my 99 and with ARP lube torqued to 75lbs with no breaks. Only issue was one of the small nuts wasn't tapped, so had to do that myself. Would have been more nervous about it if it would have been a bigger one, but figured it would hold regardless with it only needing 22lbs of torque.

 

O'riellys Auto Parts has stock style tty bolts for $26

 

Bumping this thread to see if there are any new reviews/experiences with these studs. Seems like the going price for these Chinese/ebay head studs are now around $100? Aside from them snapping during install, has anyone else had issues with them during use, etc?

 

aside from snapping during install.......

well bringing my motor to a machine shop or spending the time to drill it is not worth cheaping out to me.

but I like to buy American as much as I can so my neighbor can have a steak to at dinner.

 

After some more searching around, now I am actually curious how you can visually tell the difference between ARP and China/ebay head studs as well. Are there obvious visual differences that you can use to determine between the two?

 

The nuts on the China stuff look cheesy.
So do the washers.
The studs themselves have lots of nicked threads.
I spent an hour with a small file cleaning those up and made sure the nuts threaded on smoothly.

They worked just fine though.

The ARP are beautiful by comparison.

 

arp nuts usually have "arp" written on the shoulder

 

Installed my set to 80ftlbs no issues. I did sand the 1 side of the washers and used assembly lube to install

 

That's a LOLer right there. "Aside from them completely failing are there any other issues?"

 

oh man i have to remember to stay out of this thread

 

I just had my heads off again and re-torqued to 80lbs no problems. Alpher/eBay studs, quality seemed good on mine. The threads were clean on the studs and nuts, washers seemed good to me. I'd buy them again for sure.

 

Absolutely.

 

Hi All, I use 75 .lbs as the Pitch is different for MORE Clamp Force.

SO I ASK " What are the two last position to Torque ?

Lance

 

there was a recent post, maybe on the FB page, that someone did a stress test on ARP's, stock bolts, and these.

The ebay head studs were signifigantly weaker then stock bolts and ARP's were alot stronger.

Wish i didnt cheap out and just bought ARP's while building the motor.

But it held 24lbs on twin s366's so who knows.

 

You can't compare a bolt to a stud no matter how strong the bolt is. You would have to way over torque the stock bolts to get the same clamping force as my Chinese studs at 80lbs

 

his post says the stock bolts were STRONGER than eBay studs no weaker, but I call BS on that

 

i can believe the yield strength of the stock bolts is stronger no problem.

but he's saying the studs provide better clamping load, which is true.

so now we're talking two different things. tensile strength vs clamping force.
clamping force is not a strength.