Head Stud Q...

Berts sells a head stud that has a bigger base and a standard upper . it can be used to repair a block without drilling the head.
 
dansluck said:
Berts sells a head stud that has a bigger base and a standard upper . it can be used to repair a block without drilling the head.
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Excellent, thats what I’m into right now. Just finished drilling out seven broken head studs.
FREE hand ! NO broken drills.

Finally figured out the formula.
 
If you drill and tap the block for larger studs or helicoil inserts, use an sacrificial head to guide the drill, even if you have to enlarge the holes in the sacrificial head. Otherwise you stand the chance to have the studs bind in the head you plan to use.
 
I am going to try and be gentle here, but, hand drilling out studs is just bad practice.
The reasons are many, such as drilling off center, going too deep and breaking into the water jacket and just ending up with crooked studs. There are people with the machinery to do a proper job, in most cases the studs can be removed and the threads saved in the block.

I see blocks that are butchered up so bad that I just refuse to make anything other than farm implement ballast out of them. I have done the time savers, made sealed inserts and done heli-coils. All of the fixes work, for a while. Over torquing will just accelerate the failure rate.

FWIW, a properly installed heli-coil will test to 75 ft/lbs or higher. No good blocks were used in this testing. Just doing proof of concept.

John
 
johnneilson said:
I am going to try and be gentle here, but, hand drilling out studs is just bad practice.
The reasons are many, such as drilling off center, going too deep and breaking into the water jacket and just ending up with crooked studs. There are people with the machinery to do a proper job, in most cases the studs can be removed and the threads saved in the block.

I see blocks that are butchered up so bad that I just refuse to make anything other than farm implement ballast out of them. I have done the time savers, made sealed inserts and done heli-coils. All of the fixes work, for a while. Over torquing will just accelerate the failure rate.

FWIW, a properly installed heli-coil will test to 75 ft/lbs or higher. No good blocks were used in this testing. Just doing proof of concept.

John
Click to expand...

Good advise John. Not that it matters but last week i removed 5 broken studs on a B block i picked up. Used my mig welder and the washer and nut trick. Patience and carefully removed them. Now what to do with this block?
 
When I was reinstalling the head studs, one was a little loose, so I decided to helicoil it. Well, I didn't research it well enough and, afterwards, an experienced Model A’er had to remind me to use the head as a guide to drill the hole for the tap straight. My two helicoils were 4 deg from square and the head wouldn't go on. I removed them and used this insert to recover from my error: www.mcmaster.com/90259ai54. The specs say it needs a 33/64" tap drill, which I don't have, but 1/2" worked fine. In order to use the head as a guide, the holes in the head had to be reamed to 11/16" (as I recall), but that doesn't hurt anything, in my opinion. For checking squareness of tap, I used a 4" square I have. I would start the tap, turn enough to get a bite and then check for square in two directions, then adjust the tap and continue to bias the horizontal force in the direction needed and repeat every half turn or so. I used a nut and bolt to install the insert.
 
Thank you for the advice. I do appreciate it. My Dad has an engine that someone gave him that has the exact same issue. Somehow Dad was able to get the head on it, but one of the water neck studs is crooked. I am glad that I posted on FordBarn because there was a lot of good advice that I wasn’t even looking for.
 
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