No broken studs, but.....
 

I was re-torqueing the headstuds while trying to slow down/stop an oil leak and it appears one of my them was threaded too deeply into the case:mad: It started spinning as soon as I put any force to it and proceeded to get easier to turn.
After one full revolution I knew it was bad. So I loosened the barrel nut until I could pull it from the recess and found that the stud was only engaging the nut with one or two threads.
Now I'm thinking maybe I could get away with a thinner washer in order to get more engagement from the stud into the barrel nut.

Anybody have any ideas?? I seriously don't want to have to drop the engine in order to rectify this.:(

maybe grind the barrel down so at the edge there is a sharp thread....but a headstud takes a beating, if you only have 2 threads....
we'll see what others have to say.

I was thinking about doing that and I might try it tomorrow. The original barrel nut had the last 2 or 3 threads pulled out of it so I'm going to try using a new nut and a thinner washer first as the nuts are less than 4 bucks.
All else fails I guess it gives me a reason to turn in the plates and cancel the insurance while I rebuild the whole car :eek:

Fixed the problem using the new barrel nut and thinner washer. Now if I can figure out why the car sputters,pops and eventually stops running altogether when warm, I'd be a happy man:o

Has the engine been apart before? If not, this may be a symptom of a larger problem, although off the top of my head, I can't think of what could directly cause this, other than assembler error.

-Wayne

Hi Wayne,
Previous owner told me he had replaced the headstuds/piston rings, so I figured maybe he/his mechanic instaled the studs too deep or more likely he re-used the original barrel nuts.
I'm guessing maybe both as there was a good deal of rust on the nut while the stud looked very new.
I'm just happy that I was able to torque the nut properly with out stripping another nut.
Now for the sputtering, I did a search and it seems I may need a new accumulator and filter. If that fails then maybe I'll bail the whole CIS deal and go with one of Tony's kits:(

That seems really strange about the studs. I assume you set them to the correct height. How many base gaskets were there? What was the deck height? I'd do some more check before putting it back together.

Before you start replacing CIS parts, do you have a manual and CIS test gauges?

I did not assemble the engine.
I do have the Bentley as well as a wide assortment of tools including gauges.
:)

It's almost 1:30am here and I need to get up early.
Thanks guys
Tom

kind of hard to get them too deep. even if you didn't measure their installed heights and bottomed them out in the case, there would probably only be a thread or two difference between them all.

Thanks for the input John.
Then it must have just been the re-use of the old barrrel nut that caused the problem. There were 4 others that were a smidge loose, but none of them decided to strip thankfully. SmileWavy