The torque spec on my own head bolts was wrong for 11 years

Been rebuilding small blocks since 2009. Last month I pulled a 350 from a wrecked Camaro and decided to double check the torque sequence in my old shop manual. Turns out the chart had a typo for the center bolts, 65 ft-lbs instead of 35. I must have done 40 plus engines with that wrong number. No failures yet, but it makes me wonder how many other manuals have silent errors like that. Anyone else ever catch a bogus spec in a factory book or is it just me?

1 comments

1 Comment

wood.john14d ago

Man, that's a scary thought and probably more common than we want to admit. I once found a misprint in a wiring diagram for an old Ford that showed the ground wire going to the wrong terminal, and it made me chase a short for two days. Maybe there's a whole generation of engines out there running on slightly wrong specs, and we just got lucky they're forgiving enough to handle it.