i believe i have a cracked head developing and want to replace it before it gets bad. slight coolant burning smell on start up, heater core become air bound, coolant turns brown in 5k miles, odd burning smell near valve cover (developed last weekend). i'm looking around, autozone has 3 different options, but their tech line doesnt work, so i dont know what heads i need. can anyone point me in the right direction? also, are the head bolts torque to yield or can i safely reuse them?

 

Head bolts are TTY unless you want to spend some money and go with some ARP studs. If the truck is in fact your DD, I suppose you can't be down for a while. Are you sure you don't just have a small leak in a head gasket? Have you done any tests to see if it is a crack in the head or if it is a gasket leak?

I suppose the 3 choices you mentioned are either for two different brands with one having the choice of press-in or screw-in rocker studs. As long as the casting numbers match(they pretty much do for those heads) you should be good to go. The last two seem to be modified for "notched intake ports" whatever that means.

 

Im not certain that the heads themselves are bad. I used a gasket leak tester, and it didnt show co2 in the coolant. Im certain that it is at least the lower intake. It smoked a bit of white this morning. Im going to instead pull the heads out and have them checked. Its $40 to pressure test them, $40 to mill them. Its a lot cheaper. Its got 190,000 miles, so it doesnt hurt to check. I did a search and user "ryanmatt" had a torque sequence posted, im guessing thats reusing the bolts? If they are indeed tty, i would replace them, but the degrees posted sure seem like a lot, and just wanted to make sure. I've only used tty bolts on a 3800 series 2 and a Caterpillar C-15

 

replace the bolts - theyre not going to be expensive but the consequences of not replacing them could be. peace of mind is MUCH better than a few bucks in the pocket.

 

I have a FelPro Torque Tables book I picked up from a sales rep. at some point in time. Has specs and order for anything from a 1964 260 AC Cobra to a 1986 1116cc Yugo 4. It's up to date as of 2004 though.

"ryanmatt" may have the same thing, but:
1st all bolts to 22,
2nd Long bolts turn 80 degrees,
3rd Medium bolts turn 65 degrees,
4th Short bolts turn 55 degrees

That is for a 1995/96 Chevy 4.3L. I'm not sure how I'd get the diagram up, but I could figure something out if you need that as well.

 

sequence ?

- found it here on blazerforum n just sharing it - search works great too lol

 

Thanks guy, i must have read it incorrectly the first time. Ill figure out which bolts are which when i pull it apart

 

just to verify, the final torque follows the same pattern. ill just have to adjust how many degrees i turn, correct? never did tty with different length bolts