(The following is an unpaid testimonial. I’m just a happy customer and this might solve a problem you have)
Oneoffs are supposed to be little light articles on something I find interesting. But even so, I am, in fact, writing this about a bolt. Really. Something that pretty much goes unnoticed, yet they hold a large portion of the world together.
When you design something, a portion of time spent in a GOOD design is consideration for maintenance. The difference between a good design (Japanese motors) and bad designs (most early 80′s vacuum ratsnest motors) can frequently be seen by doing something as simple as ‘changing the sparkplugs.
With that, there’s also the understanding that speed parts are designed to:
- Improve performance above all else, and
- see ‘#1′.
When it comes time to install headers on your car, you’ll find they’re a real PITA to install. The point is that the tubes leaving the engine have to be larger, but still have to mount to the same holes the original exhaust used, which means the tubes encroach on the space originally used for TOOLS to tighten the BOLTS to hold the flippin things to the motor!
Adding insult to injury, the exhaust often encroaches on other things…like the firewall…making installation of the last bolt, on the back of the header, next to the firewall, an exercise in impossibility.
Trivia: Most wrenches are offset 30 degrees. That means you can get the wrench on the bolt, turn half a facet (15 degrees), flip the wrench, and turn it another half a facet. It takes 12 of these to make a full turn of the bolt. If you’re installing head bolts, which have about 4 threads of contact, that’s 48 such turns to get the bolt installed.
With 4 threads in an aluminum head, torqued to 25 ft/lbs or so, and something that gets hot and cold a lot, you may find your bolts don’t stay put. This can be an expensive lesson in helicoils and lock-tite if you’re not careful.
Someone thought there had to be a better way, that someone is Stage 8 (www.stage8.com)
- They added an allen head to the top of the bolt
- do not require a lock-washer, increasing the number of threads engaged in the head (for an exhaust header application)
- have an arm that presses against the exhaust tube, preventing rotation
- have a cir-clip (Jesusclip) retainer to hold the arm in place.
This means you only need enough torque to seal the system, rather than an over-torque to keep the bolt retained. A threadlocker is not required which can be a benefit if you need to install and remove the fastener a number of times.
I bought a set of 8 and only used the three or four I needed when first installing the motor in the Vette. Now that I have the time, I’ve used the rest of the set and they’re pretty darned snazzy!
