Screw-in Rocker studs! Vortec Heads *Part #'s in description*

[Music] what is going on guys it's pat in the shop uh today i'm going to do a video on vortech head stud screw in head studs i call it vortec but it's really a lot of small block chevys you can do do this too that have precedent studs so let's talk about what press and studs are so here's the difference but press and stud versus a screw-in stud a press and stud is exactly what it sounds like the stud is pressed into the head this one i've already modified to show you but typically on these or normally i should say the stud is actually pressed into the head and there's no threads that actually hold it in there so this stud all that holds it in is friction from being pressed in so when you're starting to run uh some beefier valve springs some heavier valve springs on your vortech heads or because you're doing a cam upgrade or whatever there's a chance you're gonna you could pull one of these these rocker studs out of the head which is not a good thing um typically you're safe up until i say 275 uh open pounds uh so anything like ls6 springs anything like that you're doing the beehive springs on your vortech head you really should put um the screw and studs in like this um some guys have good luck with them they'll run these these press-in studs uh with higher spring rates than that and they never have an issue but i've personally have seen these pull so uh some come out easier than others sometimes you gotta heat them to pull these out sometimes they just come out really easily so it's not worth the risk in my opinion uh the old school thing they used to do would be to pin pin the studs uh where you where you drill through and you just kind of nick it to pin it in in place uh i think some guys used to weld them and stuff which is not really too good with cast but uh the best thing and honestly it's not that hard to do and not that expensive in in this video i'll show you can just do it yourself at home is to put in screwing studs just like this they're incognito so as you can see when they're actually in the head like this one believe it or not that is a screw inside you can't even tell so it it only it doesn't really affect anything you still got to use self aligning rocker arms because you don't have guide plates if you really wanted to you can go to a machine shop and they can machine these bosses down so you can run guide plates and you don't have to run self-aligning rocker arms but you know that's going to cost you big bucks and chances are if you're already dealing with vortech heads you're like me and you like to build performance uh on a you know not so crazy budget all the time so um with these you gotta maintain your self-aligning rocker arm but it won't pull out of the head so a big thing to remember uh when doing these rocker studs is you got to make sure that they're sitting square they can't be sitting cocked you got to get them as close to square as the stock ones were and that's where this tool comes in and i'll show you that in a second um the first one's done that's a finished product as you can see it looks very similar hard to even tell that we did anything um this one is pulled and tapped and then all the rest of these are all just press and studs so what we're going to use today is the comp cams tool here and some other manufacturers make it too but i bought the comp cams one because i was hoping that it would be uh you know a little bit better quality but i don't use it exactly how uh they intend for you to use it i found a kind of a different way and i find it better results the way i do it but it's just personal preference so normally it comes with this little tool for a lining but i i don't do it like that because i found it was it was just too sloppy so i'll show you how i do it so before you get started uh before you pull anything out you want to make sure that you you take your new tool here and you got to make sure that it actually slides over the studs okay you got to make sure that this this hole uh hold the hole is the same as your stud the stud holder hole so you should have no issues putting it on um i found uh when i used to use this for pulling that i end up kind of deforming it and it would stop fitting on my studs um so i had to actually drill it out and kind of refigure it so i stopped using it for pulling studs and i'll show you what i use for that next but just make sure before you get started even if you have to uh drill the one side out the non-threaded side a little bit because that's all this is it's just two holes and then the one side has threads for starting your tap but just make sure before you get started that it actually fits over your studs because that's crucial in getting everything lined up all right as far as other tools you're gonna need uh you're gonna want two nine sixteenths wrenches um half inch uh ratchet a 3 8 ratchet with a tap socket on it uh a quarter inch 12 point works well as a tap socket for this particular tap that leads me to the next thing a 7 16 tap course you're going to need a couple drill bits a 23 64 drill bit and i have tape on here as you can see it's about an inch and a quarter down for depth a chamfer drill bit just a regular drill bit but i use it for chamfering it's a 29 64th there's your comp cams tool a a good drill make sure you have a good drill some thread sealer loctite 545 is what i normally use to seal the threads of the new studs very important make sure you don't forget the thread sealer are you're also going to need to get yourself some 3 8 fine nuts don't use rocker stud nuts if they're like the locking style i find they just gall up and give you issues just go and grab some regular um 3 8 fine nuts and these are make it way easier on your on you for when you're actually pulling the rocker studs out all right so to actually pull the studs out i do not use the comp cams tool i use that just for lining up the tap what i do is i'll put a 3 8 washer to protect the head and then what i actually use are rocker ball studs you could just get away with just stacking up washers and pulling them but i find with these hardened um rocker studs like uh these are if you don't know what that is it's the the ball that comes in a rocker arm and i'm assuming if you're upgrading your vortech heads you probably have a set of these lying around anyway that you're not going to use so stack them up i usually do them like this so start off with yeah you usually start with two you don't get enough thread engagement if you start off with three so put two on there you're gonna need five in total so you're gonna need five in total but start off with two and then one you wanna grab one of your uh three three eighths fine nuts put it on there snug it um so at this point if you don't have um an impact gun you can get away with just using uh just using a half inch ratchet normally you don't have to heat anything up sometimes if they're stubborn i had to have the heat the boss like with the torch the embossment here to to pull it out but i honestly don't like using heat unless i have to so let's start with that i'm just going to do it with a ratchet just for the demonstration i usually use an impact but so you just start tighten this down and you'll feel actually how easy they pull out considering how much pressure they're in so if you're wondering how this works is all you're doing is using its own threads you're pushing down on the nut which is pushing down on the head at the washer and then pulling the stud up so what you're going to do is just keep going that should be good you should be able to get another one in there [Music] you always want to make sure that you have good engagement here through the nut because you don't want to have a few threads and then strip it and then you're into some fun trying to get it out so always make sure you have good engagement [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] there we go actually four four did this one sometimes well maybe it only is four maybe i just have five sitting here four four in the washer we'll pull it out there you go oh just just barely you can see we were just at the end just at the end so four maybe five is needed to pull it i'll take a 29 64 drill bit and you just want to put a little chamfer on the top of this you just kind of worked a bit a little bit see that nice little chamfer on there that's all you want to do all right so after you chamfered it you want to take your drill bit your 23 64 drill bit with your inch and a quarter tape on it and you're just gonna put it down the hole just make sure it can go all the way up until the tape make sure there's no uh nothing that's gonna bind the top up but this hole is basically the perfect size for the top already you're just using the drill bit just to make sure there's nothing in there all right so you got your stud pulled you got your chamfer at the top and you made sure that your holes cleaned out you're going to leave this stud in very important and then you're going to take your comp cams tool in your tap [Music] you're going to set it on there and you're going to look down to make sure that it looks fairly square and looks fairly straight onto the hole and then you're going to take your tap again make sure your threads the threads in the comp cam piece are towards the towards the head and then you're going to let the tap you're going to screw the tap in just until you feel resistant and then the top is tapered so it should sort of center it on for you and then you're going to take your 3 8 washer again the nut hold everything square and just snug that nut up all right so now that will hold your tap straight and then it will hold it flat against the top of the head so now you can you can wind the top back out everything should stay nice and square this should be all nice and tight put a little tapping oil on your tap screw back down and you still got a watch to make sure that your tap is there's a little bit of play so make sure that your tap is going as straight as possible and you'll find it starts to tap pretty easily [Music] make sure that it's not lifting up on the head sometimes but if something's binding it should be going pretty easily a few turns just like tapping anything out back it out and back it up so this is usually when i'll stop pull it out when the top gets flush with the top of the tool [Music] [Music] there you go now you can go ahead and remove the nut remove the tool so you'll have a good amount of threads put in there you can see you can actually thread this in a little bit now i like to put it in and just make sure everything looks nice and square i mean that's a good sign but now you got to continue to tap this so you might have to clean off your tap just a little bit of brake clean usually clean off your tap reapply some more cutting oil and now you can start to keep tapping without the guide in place because you have enough threads in there that it's going to center so [Applause] so that's when i stop usually when the tap reaches the top of the bottom like where the you just bottom the the tap out where it's flush that's perfect for these studs just make sure you have whatever sides you're using you have enough thread engagement then you just want to take a little bit of brake clean clean those threads out [Music] you can feel how those new threads are those are perfect look really good and then if you want you can use your tool make sure that everything's nice and square you're going to need two of your 3 8 fine nuts and we're going to use these to lock the stud for torquing it in but before we put this in something that's really important is you got to put thread sealer you've got to put thread sealer on your lower threads because some of these threads go into the water jacket some of them to the intake runners so you can either have a vacuum leak sucking through the threads or a coolant leak into the top of your motor from your head coming up the thread so make sure you put thread sealer on i use a lock type 545 i've used just regular thread sealer liquid thread sealer but i've had good luck with the lock tape i like loctite stuff i find this stuff works pretty good for this application so i put lots on as you can see all right and then your two nuts on top you're gonna take two wrenches and you're gonna snug these two nuts is up as hard as you can you'll lock them together and then you're going to tighten them [Music] now you make sure that the actual stud is turning not just the nuts [Music] and then you're going to grab your torque wrench hopefully you have a torque wrench and what i usually do these two is 25 foot pounds there's some there's different people say different things but i've always used 25 foot pounds with the loctite thread sealer never had an issue in lots of sets all right so now that you got your stud final finally torqued in all ready to go this one is done so then you can move on to your next stud just like i did over here i did this one and then i went onto this one but the reason why you don't want to pull that one out is you're going to repeat the same process with the new stud on the old stud when it comes to lining it up so you're going to pull your next one out just like i did here and then you're going to slide your tool over and line your top up just like we did before so it's the same process you're just using the new stud you put in to do the same thing you did with the old stuff and it's just that simple you're just going to keep going along pulling one using the one beside it to align it and then repeating the process flip the other way and you'll go through and do all your the rest of your uh the rest your studs until you're done and that's it just make sure again make sure you use your loctite and make sure you have them torqued and you shouldn't have any issues this is the best way i've found to do it it keeps everything nice and square nice and straight just like they were from factory because you're using the original stud to line up the new one and then you're using the new stud that's lined up to the old one to line up the other side so it works out really nice with this tool and you're going to have no issues with pulling pulling these out like as soon as you get to the higher the higher lift springs the beehive springs the heavier springs uh where pulling a stud is you know becomes an issue so pretty slick works good incognito you can't even tell you did anything but it makes a huge improvement so there you go guys so if you have any questions feel free to ask down down at the bottom or shoot me an email i love doing this stuff and i love helping people out i've been getting a lot of emails lately from people with questions on vortech heads and i love to answer it so please like and subscribe if you're not a subscriber uh and i'm putting videos on vortech stuff people really seem to love this vortex stuff as much as i do so i love i love putting out videos on it uh thanks guys

Channel: CUTTER'S PERFORMANCE

Views: 84,633

Keywords: iMovie, vortec, screw in studs, sbc, vortec studs, vortec rocker studs, vortec heads, vortec rocker arms

Id: ejih8y7wli4

Length: 19min 21sec (1161 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020