The local perfomance shop around me is telling me that I will have to mill the rocker stands to get the ARP head studs to fit on my 96, anyone have any advice on whether this can be done without milling or if it must be done?

 

Gotta mill them, no other way around it. Unless you have a mill or a surface grinder it'll cost you a hundred bucks or so.

 

12mm or 14mm studs?? the 12mm you DO NOT have to mill anything to install them, but the 14mm ones you do have to mill

 

Uh... No, you HAVE to mill the rocker towers for 12mm studs, you just won't have to tap anything. The old style ARP studs were the ones you didn't have to mill for, instead you ground the webbing out of the top of the valve covers.

 

Ive never heard of this before...when did they start using the "new" style studs

 

so your saying that to install standard 12mm studs you have to grind or mill. then how come my buddy put a set of ARPs in yesterday without doing andthing but change them out 1 by 1 so we didnt have change the head gasket?

 

you do not have to mill them. it is recomended but it does not have to be done. i took a die grinder to the inside of my valve covers and they work fine

 

Yeah, those are the old style. those are taller than allowed by the valve cover. The new ones only protrude maybe a 1/4" above the rocker tower, so if you feel comfortable with a few threads holding down your head, thats up to you, but to me the point of doing studs is to take advantage of their strength. If you don't believe me go to ARP's website, if they don't have install info listed, they'll be able to tell you if you email them.

 

i bought my studs less than two moths ago and the nut completely threads onto the studd if it is installed right, but it is recomended the rockers are milled

 

So... Let me ask you, why would ARP tell you to mill the rocker towers if you didn't need to? And just because you bought them 2 months ago doesn't mean they haven't been sitting on a shelf for god knows how long. Did you thread the stud completely into the block then back it out 1/4 turn?

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