ok, flame suit is on.................. i was telling my buddy i had just bought some arp headstuds so i can push 20+psi without worrying but wasnt going to instal them yet until i get a new headgasket and valvecover gasket kit.

his reply was " you dont need a new headgasket just remove one old bolt, repalce with arp, torque it down to spec and move to the next oem bolt until there all replaced. just follow the pattern the arp guide shows you, thats what i did."

my first thought was , wtf? why have i never heard of this before?
my second thought was, this guy is pushing 25 psi and over 650hp.

is this guy stupid or is this possible?? does seem like it would be easier than pulling the head

 

He's an idiot. Do it the right way. I'm sure that in some po dunk racing town, that's what they do and it "could" work but I would never do it. Besides, why would you ever bother? Keep the stock head bolts in there and you'll be fine for what you're trying to do. I'm not gonna reference the several S2000's on this board that have made 600-700hp with stock head bolts.

 

LOL...If you want to replace them do it the correct way...cutting corners on this type of project could cause you more hassle and $$.

 

Realstreet stretched their stock headstuds just above 25psi or just above 700hp. so since 15psi on pump is not gonna get to where i wanna be i recently bought a fullblown duel pump hanger and headstuds to get this puppy up near the 700hp area so i can really start breaking stuff, lol

and orlando is far from a "po-dunk" racing town. but it seems that we have some ill-informed or just straight stupid people with nice cars

ive ran stock ap2 valvetrain for about 15k miles boosted with the limiter set at 8400. would the added stress of almost double the boost call for new valve springs? im not too worried about raising the limiter as it will cause more stress on the f22 bottom end more than anything.

 

Not sure if you need springs...but I would certainly upgrade the retainers. And as a very wise person told me once...if you are going to take it apart, you might as well build it back better. There are tons of choices for springs, I went with BC titanium doubles with retainers as well.

 

OP, it's possible, but I don't recommend going that route.

 

Take it from me who dropped a valve. Replace the retainers and springs to stronger ones.

 

He's not an idiot. I've seen it before, works fine.
Not sure if I would do it myself though....

By the way, people saying OEM studs work fine @ 20psi? Is this proven, or just a guess? Anyone with some experience with the OEM studs on a boosted s2k?

 

I personally have replaced my springs and retainers with ferrea. And then to be honest, I did this dick head method one at a time with the FBM studs lol. Didn't wanna admit to it but I did, and to be honest 6k later I'm still going strong. I know a bunch of people that have done it on other cars. As long as you haven't lifted the head or f@#ked anything it SHOULD (key word) be fine. Would I reccomend it, no because we all know the right way. I was talking shit to someone and had to get to a race so we said f it and went for it.

Like I said, no problems since.

My method. Pull one bolt, put the stud in and do the fbm sequence according to spec. I started from te middle and worked my way to the outside (cyl 1 and 4).

Again. It is the fubar method, worked for now lol.

 

You didn't need to widen the holes to 1/2" (per FBM's instructions)?