Are the head bolts reusable???

[egrasher]

Ive got an 80 360 block and am going to refresh all the gaskets. I am just curious as to wether or not I will need to buy new head bolts. I think i know the answer to my next question but here goes, can you reuse your flex plate bolts?

[jeepsr4ever]

You can reuse them but for the best results new bolts should be at least considered.

[82Waggy]

Keep in mind if you go with an upgraded head bolt, like an ARP, it will change the distortion of the cylinders due to less stretch than stock bolts. A good machine shop will recommend doing the finish hone with a torque plate and the ARP bolts to simulate this distortion in order to ensure the bores are round when assembled. If you are not going to use a torque plate for the final hone, stick with stock bolts - get new ones if you want, but I would not worry about getting ARP head bolts unless you are going up quite a bit from stock compression.

[AMX69PHATTY]

I was concerned when I installed heads with new ARP head bolts on my 343 becuase per ARP instructions when using thier Moly grease on the threads and washers the bolts were to be torqued to only 65 ft/lbs instead of 90-100 ft/lbs as called for in the TSM for the stock head bolts. The ARP instructions did call for 85 ft/lbs is bolts were lubricated with motor oil though. I just thought that 65 seemed an awful lot less than 100. Ended up using Moly grease and 65 ft/lbs torque and used Fel-Pro Blue Permatorque head gaskets with spray copper coat on the steel side only. Haven't installed motor and ran it yet. Hopefully everything will seal up properly. After all that and reading about the stress distortion, shoulda just re-used my stock bolts, but felt compelled to use the ARP's since I bought'em.
:-|

[1980_Cj7]

We decided to get new head bolts, since the old ones were on and off at least twice that we knew of. We went with the ARP's. After reading some of the posts here about the potential for more block distortion when using them, I asked my machine shop guy about that. He said the torques that ARP recommends takes all that into account.

[82Waggy]

Lower torque makes sense to reduce bore distortion with lower stretch bolts.

I guess if you were shooting for as close to round bores as possible you would still want to finish hone with a torque plate and whatever bolts you were going to use - maybe it is all just more splitting of hairs, but even the stock bolts are known to cause distortion.

[1980_Cj7]

Yes, I would have definitely rather used a torque plate, and thanks for the offer of yours, 82waggy, but by the time you offered it was too late, our block was already done. Guess we'll cross our fingers and hope for the best.