Heads Studs vs. Head Bolts
Or crap fuel with iron heads. Many many years ago I had just got my 340 out of the motor shop and had a pretty hot tune in it. I was running low on money so I grab the gas can that was in the garage and ported into the fuel tank, about 10 miles down the road I miss the shift and started out in third gear blew out both head gaskets at the same time due to detonation I guess? and they were quality gaskets Mopar performance. I have moved to steel shim gaskets and will never look back! jmo
I agree that a bad tune can blow the head gaskets, so can excessive overheating etc. IMHO though we are missing the point.
The op has asked when to go studs.
Before the release of the Fel pro 1008 head gasket, sbm,s even in good states of tune and proper fuel, were notorious for head gasket failure.
The root cause as mentioned in a previous post is that the sbm only uses 4 bolts per cylinder compared to say a Chev that used five.
The design of the engine has less clamping force on the heads.
Running up the ratio aggravates this.
Mopar use to recommend the Fel pro after 11:1 I believe.
The 1008 gasket was a big break through for sbm in the day.
Today we have the Cometic taken from Diesel engine technology.
The Cometic with studs greatly improved reliability with high compression ratios. The arp studs instructions call for an additional
20 ft lbs of torque to get to optimum clamp. This alone is a torque, that stock bolts will not take because of the metallurgy of the bolt materials. The op has already committed to buying some kind of aftermarket arp product. For my money I would go right to the studs, because it is a better choice for reliability. IMHO
