Studs

One problem with putting together a car from boxes is that the people who took it apart didn't necessarily save everything that they should. In particular, most of the studs had been removed from the engine and not kept. That's not a problem except that one doesn't necessarily know what dimensions the original studs were.

The head studs weren't a problem as a friend was in Italy and just asked for outside plug 250 head studs and brought them home for me. The valve cover studs are standard and easily measured. But when I went to do that, I found that the valve covers weren't the correct ones for these heads. When I went to count, there were 5 holes on each side in the covers, but six stud locations in the heads. Got that sorted out and was able to buy the studs from McMaster-Carr.

There is a another PF coupe undergoing restoration locally, so I was able to measure all of my missing studs to determine what I needed.

Most of the studs for the block are special. They have fine threads on the exposed end for the nut, but coarse threads where they screw into the aluminum block, head, etc. This gives more bite into the softer aluminum. I ended up having Dennison International make the 15 or so studs that I was missing. I had made a good contact down there when I helped out on their restoration of the 'Golden' 330 GT. I asked how they make the studs. They start with a bolt with the correct fine thread that's long enough. Then, cut it to length removing the hex head. After that, they put rolled threads on that end matching the coarse thread requirement.

Here are some of the studs I needed.

It turns out that I made an error on the manifold studs. These are 10mm with 1.5mm threads on the block end. I presumed that they would have the fine machine threads (1.25mm) on the other end, but instead, they are more finely threaded than that with 1.0mm threads. Since Ferrari used special acorn nuts, I had to have those studs remade correctly as the acorn nuts are not available in the 1.25mm thread.