+ $65 for a head gasket and all the work involved.

I'm a firm believer in leaving factory fitment and quality control alone when all possible. Cracking open a perfectly good oem engine just for some peace of mind WOULD NOT give me piece of mind.

 

Head studs cost like 100 bucks man why not install them when u got your cams removed? Your tuner will charge u again for labor just to install head studs later on. I put t hem on my car and was running 30+ all day. Didn't wanna risk doing damage to the head at those boost levels with stock head studs

 

It's not the cost really, its taking the chance of developing a leak. So far I have heard stories of stock studs holding up, but no stories really of stock studs breaking. It sounds truly like you have a greater change of blowing something if you do the head studs. I will probably just wait until I actually blow the headgasket and then install them the right way. Till then, she won't be beat on too hard anyways.

 

The RIGHT way to do the studs is to remove the head and replace the head gasket when doing the studs. I agree with a lot of you guys, why spend the money and/or time and crack open a brand new motor if you are only running on pump gas?

 

Well if u have someone that knows what their doing work on your car you wont have leaks and headstuds are only if u wanna run race gas with high boost levels which is what i was doing on stock turbo and now big turbo

 

Just do the studs, they are pretty cheap right now, so the question you should be asking yourself, is why not?

 

I started pushing coolant at 28psi on the EvoGreen with E85. $90 later, it's all better

 

What is wrong with you guys wanting to change to studs using the 1x1 method!?!? Any time the stock head bolt is released of it's tension, the head gasket seal is broken. The only way to do head studs and do it properly is to completely remove the head and replace the gasket...these are MLS gaskets here guys, not cheap lead ones...they don't reseal twice, it's a one shot deal. You may not seem to have problems at first, but you will later on down the road especially if you push the motor. I've seen plenty of stock head bolt Evo's running great numbers with no issues, and as long as your motor is tuned properly with no detonation you won't have an issue with extremely high cylinder pressure that might lift the head.

 

my vote is deffo do not disturb a factory sealed engine.
untill you have a blow issue (head lifting)
to get a 100% as factory seal after removing a head is to skim it flat again
it maybe very close to flat but a skim will give it ultimate cleaness too which is essential.

 

i got my arp headstuds installed. Recommended by iveytune 24-27psi on pump with no issues at all.

 

To replace the cams you need to remove the valve cover NOT THE HEAD. To replace studs you need to remove the head and change the head gasket. removing the valve cover to change cams will not do any good unless you are willing to pull off the head before installing the cams.

 

The kid I bought my car off of had this done and I wish he wouldnt have.... I have the oil leak from the head and will need to replace the headgasket to fix this issue... I wish he would have read up a little more before he started doing pointless modifications to the car.... or at least had it done the RIGHT way!!

 

+1

 

I agree with everyone with keeping the stock studs to a certain point because the head stud and gasket has expanded enough to hold pressure, but if you loosen the stock head stud to replace with a stronger one, the gasket and especially stud will lose its "young's modulus", which is the ratio of stress and elasticity and there is at least 51% chance that you will have a leak. if you're going to replace with a higher tensile capacity stud, then you need to replace the gasket and use a dial indicator or some sort of measuring tool to ensure that the block and head surface is true or else you will need to remachine, as the head gasket will expand but so much. I've had different motors such as a SR20DET bluebird motor (> 70k miles) on a sentra that was designed to run 7 psi, and have turned the boost up to 19 psi and have had no issues with the stock headgasket; keep in mind that I've always had a turboxs knock lite and have detected basically no knock at all. Which leads me to agree with folks stating the knock being much more of a factor than how much boost you run; if you have a very conservative tune with basically no knock with 10 psi more than stock then I would not worry; however, if you even run stock boost and have moderate+ knock, you will see more than 10 psi than stock in your cylinder. Now, there is also the factor of head, headgasket, and head stud fatique over time, but like someone said, once your headgasket blows, then just remachine the head and replace with an aftermarket head gasket and high tensile stud. I truly believe that the agressiveness of your tune (timing and afr) is much more of a variable in the transfer equation than simply the amount of boost you run.

Having said all that, however, does anyone have experience with having leaks with the stock gasket and stud at about 27 psi+?

 

ive held out on getting head studs for many of the reasons already stated in this thread. i just got tuned for 30 psi on E85 and the tuner/shop basically said headstuds would be a necessity before tuning at that level of boost. so i went ahead with it and yes they did the 1x1 method. we shall see what happens.