Originally posted by Sophia69IS
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Anyway, yes, I remember you. You caught me on my weekly Walmart trip to pick up my usual 36 count box of Magnum size condoms. I saw your similar car, and I drove by slowly to get your attention, because our cars looked like they might be friends. Didn't get your attention, and I'm not creepy enough to pull up and park next to male strangers, especially with condoms on my mind, so that was that. Nice car, BTW.
As for my ongoing project, I spent a few days away from it, stewing over the shallow main bearing stud issue. Strange, because I ordered the specified kit from ARP, according to the machine shop that has built up many of these M20 engines. In my research, though, I can't find formal documentation of the M20-specced part number from ARP.
It still bugs me that those ARP studs don't protrude from the nuts. This happens when I farm out work; questioning variances like that. The more I think, the more I worry. Then my concern escalates, and I imagine that maybe it's worse that it seems; maybe the studs aren't even bottomed out, and still installed short. Here's a picture of what worried me:
So I went back and loosened the main bearing stud nuts (in the correct order), and sure enough, the studs weren't even screwed down all the way. Picture shows the studs fully threaded into the block (that I painstakingly chased and cleaned of gunk in a previous post). One side has the washer, the other doesn't.
So apparently the studs were backed out of the block enough to thread just the bare minimum nuts, ostensibly to reach acceptable torque. Unacceptable (to me). Must have at least two threads protruding from the nut, while the stud is bottomed out.
OTOH, since the main caps are steel, one could use the nuts without the thick washers (as pictured for the top stud/nut above), but even then there's barely full thread coverage. Call me crazy, but when you spend 1/8 of $1K for slightly more than a baker's dozen of some finger-length small caliber studs with washers and nuts, I feel like they should fit as a mechanical engineer intended, including the washers. In this case, backing out the stud to make it fit sacrifices precious block thread real estate, thereby losing out on ultimate stud grippage. I'm sure this setup is fine for 99.9% of users, and that I'm making a big deal for myself out of nothing, but I still find it frustrating, can't let it go, and I'm going to fix it...
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