Hi guys,

I am rebuilding a 292 all completely stock, I got it back from the machine shop and i'm starting to rebuild it. One of the conrod nuts is damaged not the treads on the bolt. I got an ARP conrod bolt kit could i just use the nuts or is it easy to replace the bolts? My car is a 59' Edsel that when i bought it, it had an Opel senator engine in it but i got the original 292 y block with it. I'm from Ireland and there are hardly any y blocks here. This is a great site. Hopefully you can come up with an answer. Thanks again.

Ken Whelan.

Ken

The bolts come out reasonably easily using a brass hammer and giving each a couple of quick straight on raps, or if you have the set-up you can use a press.

For your purpose, the ARP set is overkill and if you had the rods re-machined, those bolts should have been installed prior to honing.  If you install them now, the extra torque ARP wants could cause the rod to go out of round.

You could still probably get away with it(using the ARP) but you should be able to find a good replacement nut easily as it is 3/8 fine thread and many, many Ford, Chevy and Mopar engines used them.  Just make sure it's a con rod nut as they are slightly longer and harder than the standard 3/8 nut.  I'm just not sure how easy fractional sizes will be to get over there.

Ken, I would just replace the nuts with the ARP.  Use stock torque spec. Don't try to substitute the ARP bolts. The caps aways shift when the ARP bolts are installed and you would need to have the rods resized.

http://ford-y-block.com 

20 miles east of San Diego, 20 miles north of Mexico

Hi John,

Thats great news,thats exactly what I will do,We have a saying in Ireland and it goes like this "If its not broke dont fix " so I will just replace the nuts as you said.

Thank you again for replying and to any body else that has replied.

Ken whelan.

Ken