Restoring a Legend, Building a LS3 For Falken’s Championship Winning S13, Part One

For our head and main caps, we used high strength ARP studs so we could use higher torque values for better head seal and bottom end integrity. ARP studs are made of 8740 chromoly steel. 8740 has superior strength over a more common chromoly like 4130 because it has a higher carbon content and responds to heat treatment better.  It also makes use of nickel as an alloying element which increases toughness.  8740 has a very high tensile strength of around 200,000 PSI. The ARP studs and bolts also have several design features like rolled (superior to cut threads due to good grain formation in the thread root) asymmetrical J-form threads with more engagement area on the stressed side and a reduced center diameter to reduce stress risers. ARP studs and bolts, also have high quality forged nuts and precision ground and hardened washers for accurate torque and positive retention.

Spinning off your harmonic balancer is never good, we used a high strength ARP balancer bolt.

To assure good head seal even with high compression and drifting abuse, we used a JE Pro Seal head gasket.  The Pro Seal gasket is an MLS type gasket which uses multiple layers of thin stainless steel which are polymer coated to form a tough and forgiving seal to the block.  A folded stopper layer is used around the cylinders to give increased clamp load to further improve the seal.  The folded stopper really helps on engines with high cylinder pressures.

We used King’s tough XP bearings.  The XP bearing is a tri-metal type bearing.  It has a steel backing with a lead, copper, tin intermediate layer.  The intermediate layer has a high copper content which gives it outstanding load capacity.  The intermediate layer is etched using the secure bond process which helps to assure adhesion to the pMax Black overlay.  The overlay is fortified with copper nano-particles which further increase load-bearing capacity while reducing friction and providing improved wear.

The main bearings feature Kings U-Groove technology with 90-degree walls on the oil feed grooves which give more bearing surface area. The oil feed holes that deliver oil to the grooves feature Kings ElliptiX oil feed hole design.  The feed holes are chamfered and lengthened to help improve the oil feed which helps assure that the rod bearings have enough oil supply. King bearings are very tightly toleranced across the bearing face so the oil clearance is consistent across the crank journal.

The main and rod bearings, use King’s RadiaLock dimensioning method to get the optimal crush clearance. This helps assure that the bearings will fit tightly in their bore for good heat transfer and good resistance to spinning.  Unlike conventional bearings with tight crush,  King bearings get clamped tightly in their bores without wear near their parting line due to their dimensioning process.  The bearings also use Kings Eccentrix dimensioning method which takes the oil wedge into account when designing in the bearing material thicknesses. The thickness is varied to help form a more stable and consistent hydrodynamic layer of pressurized oil on the bearings face even at high RPM.