[lust4speed]

I went through the stud selection years ago when I went with the AllPontiac aluminum block and first gen Edelbrock RPM heads. A joint effort involving Frank and myself finally got things sorted out and it didn't involve the pre-boxed studs listed on the ARP website. 1" or a little less thread engagement should be fine for the cast iron block, but that little engagement when there is 2" available on the aluminum block probably wasn't going to cut it. Even after exhausting the inventory at ARP for stud lengths I still had three studs that had to have steel bushings because they were just a little too long. Raced for years with this setup with absolutely no problem.

Story gets a little weird when the friend I sold the car and engine to had it freshened at a local shop and they discarded my custom kit and went with the off-the-shelf ARP studs. He had seepage of coolant into the oil and couldn't figure out why. I talked him into going back to my fitted studs and the leak stopped. I'm figuring that the short end studs in the kit fitted on the early head was too long and he ran out of threads before torqueing down the head.