Hey all.

The dealership helped me out by messing up my rear pass spark plug hole. The spark plug would literally fall down into the head. On borescope the threads were still there. So clearly something fky was going on . I had to remove the head and have a helicoil put in. (Machine shop did that). While he had the head checked my lifters, valves, springs etc. cleaned everything. Upon doing do my valves showed a lot of wear, he recut and reseated them, my springs were also at 90 (they told me factory has 90-100) they put PSI .625" lift beehives in (130) checked my lifters they were good.

I got everything reassembled. New head gaskets. New bolts. All torqued to sequence. Or so i thought….. (the wrench i had only started at 30. I hand tightened them in sequence, 30lb in sequence, 30lb in sequence plus a 90* (which i think the guy helping me torque them did a half turn not 1/4 and that was all. i put everything back on last night, then he see’s on my fb that i have all the new rods and rocker arms etc. back on. Which by that time i already had the valve covers back on and the intake back on). He then calls me and proceeds to say oh i looked up those bolt torques and i didn’t do a third pass (already with me telling him at that time it needed one. But didn’t want to listen to me, man knows better. Told me he looked it up himself then as well. Obviously untruthful).

My question is now this. Do i need to remove all these bolts and buy new ones again? Then re torque everything again? Or are these torque’s sufficient? Bolts 11-15 were all torqued at that time properly. (In their sequence by instruction)
Would they also need to come out and be redone?

Or is there a torque lb at the final so i can just check that last stage torque with x to make sure they are tight enough.

I’m not looking forward to any of it, especially since now he’s doing damage control, instead of doing it properly at that time. And more so incase something goes wrong and he can’t be held liable.

Thanks for reading and hopefully i can get an answer,,,,

 

You don’t need new bolts because they haven’t yielded yet, meaning you haven’t taken them to their designed yield point yet. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you have to re torque them all, which means taking your rocker arms back off.
The headbolts torque sequence is 22 ft lbs…then 90 degrees…then 70 degrees. Do one at a time. Don’t loosen all the bolts at once. That would compromise your headgasket seal. Loosen one bolt at a time, and correctly torque it before going to the next bolt. Follow the correct torque sequence here, which starts in the center of the head and moves outward. Don’t worry about the 10 small fasteners under the intake. They aren’t important and do nothing for head seal. That’s why GM deleted them on the Gen5 engines. Only re-torque the 20…10 per head…large fasteners. Your fine here.

 

i took them all out and put in new bolts. I’ve had a lot of stuff go bad with this car and already listed it on marketplace a month ago. (Just to see if i’d get anything close to what i’d like). Would they not be over torqued at 30lbs + 180 (1/2 a turn not 1/4)? Thats already far over what 22lbs .+90 +70 would be) Thats what a local engine guy said yesterday. The guy who rebuilt my heads said the same. Over torqued. Wouldn’t be by much but it wasn’t advised…..I already did the drivers side yesterday with taking them all out then starting again….. i loosened the pass side before i got fed up with it, before i left it for the night. I guess if the drivers gasket is fked, i’ll be doing it yet again. Will keep the bolts i just took out as well.

Will do the pass side the way you suggested today when i get back there. The drivers side did leak some antifreeze when i took the bolts out (i refilled the antifreeze when everything was “torqued properly”…. The first time…. I’m also an idiot for not rememberi g to remove that before i opened everything up. So i would now assume there would be coolant in the piston compartments…..(i installed new gaskets when i put the heads back on the first time. Obv when everything was done at 22lbs it stopped. I only have 5 fasteners under the intake. I did remove all of those already. So does it have to come off again as there was coolant on that gasket when i retorqued them, or will that coolant go quickly into the oil and i can immediately change it after its ran for a few minutes? (When i drained the system and took the head off the first time coolant still came out and there wasn’t much in the cylinder) if i have to tear it down again to get that coolant out buy another gasket and another set of bolts since they were torqued properly this time then i guess better to do it before its started……. (That sides all back together obv.)

I basically have to sit in the engine bay and use my legs as leverage to get the bolts torqued by myself. I’m not a very big nor strong person. Will do the way you suggested the passenger side and hope for the best today. I read as much as i could before removing them all and overlooked the one at a time part 😞. Thank you for your reply and your time. (When i did the torques after the 22, i made marks on the bolt heads so i would know for a fact i made the proper rotation turns) also always do correct sequences on everything as i know thats important for proper seals).

 

Or you could just go out and buy ARP head bolts which can be reused and you just torque them to say 30/50/70 foot pounds and be done with it and not deal with all this degree nonsense. If you do go that route make sure you use their assembly lube.

 

It would help to understand more clearly what you're doing, and WHY. The WHY is the most important part.

Traditional bolts act like ... bolts. They're designed to be hard and unyielding, and to apply clamping force in proportion to their torque. They act like an inclined plane except that it's wrapped around in a circle, such that if you put some amount of torque on them, the pitch of the threads multiplies that into clamping force. They have a very strong weakness in that even very tiny deviations in the size of the parts that they're clamping, results in a very large change in clamping force. That aside though, that's what we've all been using from time immemorial, and it's worked well enough all these years.

Torque to yield bolts are different. They act like SPRINGS. The idea is that their metallurgy is chosen such that when some particular amount of stretching force is applied to them, they "yield", and then NO LONGER act like "bolts" in the traditional sense. Instead, over a fairly wide range of size change, the clamping force they apply REMAINS CONSTANT, because they're springs instead of a fixed-length hard thing. They are superior in that regard, and are one of the reasons why modern motors often go well over a quarter million miles without head gasket failures, where older motors start having head gasket failures long before that.

The 22 ft-lbs (or whatever it happens to be for the particular bolts) is merely a shorthand for something like "snug". Incidentally, if you want to get technical, the spec ISN'T 22 ft-lbs; it's ACTUALLY metric, specifically 30 N-m, which converts to 21.7 ft-lbs. Keep in mind though, the factories use automatic assembly equipment, and that sort of thing HAS TO BE set to some kind of "spec"; on the production line, you can't tell the workers, or the machines, "just make em snug". Gotta have a number. So logically, and as it should be, whatever number they call out for in the factory, whether "critical" or not, gets copied out into the world of service.

So, at 22 ft-lbs, all the slack in everything is taken up, the gaskets are solidly sandwiched between the castings even if they're slightly bent or anything like that, and the clamping force is some small fraction of the eventual value, like maybe 5% or something. That's ALL that the initial spec is designed to do, is to assure that what FOLLOWS, is consistent.

Thus, once they're "snug", the real tightening begins. Depending on the metallurgy of the bolts, the angle tells how much stretch is being applied to the bolts (since the threads pull into the block by x .001"s for every y ° you turn them), which in turn tells you whether you've stretched them to the point that they yield. You do that in increments, just like you torque regular bolts, so that every bolt gets tightened evenly by the same amount, without distorting the casting unnecessarily by having some bolt(s) WAY tighter than others. Using the angle also means that the amount of friction in the threads NO LONGER affects how tight you end up getting the bolts; using a torque spec, if some threads have more friction than others, then those will not be as tight, since you'll quit tightening once the torque is reached, no matter how much or little clamping force the bolt is applying. It's just a better way of doing things. We've learned how to get better as a species. Like, sure, I remember when we used to throw things at our food as it ran by so that it would slow down long enough for us to take a bite; sure, it was plenty "good enough" at the time, after all, that got me here today; butt that doesn't mean I don't go to the grocery store nowadays instead.

Note also that TTY bolts are NOT all the same metallurgy, meaning, they DO NOT all require the same angle to reach the desired condition. For this reason you should ALWAYS follow the instructions that come with THE BOLTS YOU ARE ACTUALLY USING, not the factory service manual. Not that the FSM is "wrong"; just, if FelPro or whoever makes theirs out of some kind of different metal, and gives you a spec for THEIR metal, then THEIR SPEC will assure that THEIR BOLTS reach the correct yield point, which might take a different tightening than the factory original bolts did. The factory's specs apply to THEIR bolts and not necessarily every other bolt that will ever be made. Kinda like automatic transmissions; replacement parts like clutches and whatnot are NOT THE SAME as the factory's, and they CHANGE over time besides, as different products get introduced or materials phased out or lessons are learned or whatever, which is why you should always use a CURRENT ATSG or similar manual to get the "specs" for assembling one, NOT the original FSM. Same reasoning.

Bottom line then is, what you're doing is fine. The coolant leaked merely because you took all the bolts out. It won't materially affect anything. A better way to do it would have been to take the bolts out one at a time, lube them, and torque them to spec, with the other 9 left in place; replacing them again probably wasn't necessary, butt by doing so, you can be assured that they're reaching the correct stretch. You should be fine doing what you're doing. You're overthinking it.

 

You must ensure…important here…that you don’t have coolant in the cylinders when you go to start this thing. It will hydrolock and either bend rods, or break a rod or two and kick them out through the block. It’s very common. Pull all your spark plugs before you start it and turn it over for several seconds with the plugs out.

 

THANK YOU! Will do! I was awaiting someone to tell me something before I did any of that!

 

accurate wrench 22ftlb in sequence, then i marked the bolt heads. At the top of each way they sit. Then i use the torque wrench as far as i can. Then i use a Braker bar. I don't have enough leverage. So i can see when it does 1/4 turn. One bolt 6 & 4 feels super tight to do and 10 & 9 feels “easier” to do if that makes sense. They are done to a t of spec of what i had said.

Doing rockers now (yes i rotate the engine by hand to make sure the pressure is off the sets i’m doing

 

I find when doing head bolts, that the torque increases through the first however many degrees, then about halfway through the last pull, they feel like they get softer, or at least, quit getting tighter. I think that's EXACTLY how they're designed. They YIELD.

Don't worry about extreme precision on the rockers. Again, the REAL spec IS NOT 22 ft-lbs; it's 30 N-m, which is ONLY 21.7 ft-lbs. Butt with those, everything is all solid metal-to-metal; there's nothing that compresses, deforms, or changes dimension in any other way, such that in any manner way shape form or fashion, that it's critical; all that the spec is, is the standard torque for that size bolt, which gives the standard clamping force that you can look up in the spec book for metric bolts, for that size & thread of bolt. As in, if the engineers had wanted some other amount of clamping force, they'd have designed it with some other size bolt, and the "spec" would likely have followed suit. Keep in mind also, that the tension of the valve spring (assuming 300 lbs on a fully open valve) only amounts to something a little less than 2 ft-lbs of torque on the bolt. Again, the factory uses automatic tightening eqpt, and they have to set it to SOMETHING, and ... well, since it's the size and thread bolt that it is, and that bolt's torque is 30 N-m, well, 30 N-m it is. I've never been to a motor factory and seen em do it, butt I can't honestly believe that they give a rat's flying hind quarters where the valves are while they're tightening em up on a production-line motor. Butt we, being as precise as we are, can add 1 ft-lb if we see a valve opening a good bit (torque it all the way to 23 ft-lb), and for valves that are all the way open, we can bump it up to [gasp!] 24 ft-lb. [/gasp!] There's things in the world worth measuring down to a gnat's ***, and things that if they're "good enough", they're ... "good enough". Rocker bolt torque is in the latter category.

Understand the WHY and the HOW IT GOT THERE in addition to looking up "spec" in "book".

 

i got everything buttoned to torque specs and everything back together. Plugs are out, headers are still off. Purged fuel line.

I cycled the car for 7 seconds like it was suggested and nothing really came out. It’s still up on blocks i’ll have someone help me get the hedders back on and i can lower it down, then i will try it again. Is there any way you could message me for my questions directly vs posting on here 50 more times?

 

Check your PM’s….

 

Hi ALL, I made TTL studs for use on engines with AL heads.
I can state that method if interested?