When I last did the tappets I had the heads off as part of the last engine rebuild. I torqued the heads up to 19 lbs ft but have not touched them since when I should have checked them a while later but was too lazy.
So doing the right hand side today, the tappets were a little loose which was good as mine normally tighten up so came to checking the torque on the heads - set the wrench at 18 - top left OK, bottom right OK, top right OK, bottom left - no resistance at all (holy crap)
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
So removed the nut and washer to check the barrel head stud - seemed OK - I then used the Dremel to slot the end of the stud and tried to turn it with a screw driver and all was good. Then I noticed that the threads near the head seemed to be damaged/stripped however on closer inspection there seemed to be metal between the studs threads - hmm - looking at the head nut I could see that its threads had stripped out
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif)
So I got a nice new shiny hi tensile nut out of the tool box and as a precaution put an additional thick washer on so some unused threads would now be used.
Now I could not have over torqued the nut this time around, and when I did it a few years back all four head studs were tightened up Ok but maybe there was an issue with this nut - torqued up but with the engine operating has failed.
So tappets now set back to .2mm and head studs at 18 lbs ft (2.5mkp) and fingers crossed all is OK and there are no oil leaks when I put the rocker cover back on.
Garry