Single Avcs FU cam bolts by TIC. Find another part of you car to curse at!

Hey!... Welcome to another #modmonday! This week we will feature a blessing to the Subaru engine builders and owners lives. The @turn_in_concepts FU cam bolts. These have been on the Forester for almost 3 years now with no troubles.

When you decide to build a new block, install new head gaskets or many other fun Subaru engine crafts. You will find yourself staring at the bane of most Subaru owner's existence. The 10mm Allen cam bolts installed from the factory. Even with the proper tools in hand and you will find yourself uttering expletive after expletive about these ruining your otherwise straight forward project.

You wouldn’t this bolt wants to ruin your life by looking at it.. but little do you know….

I had an extremely fun time removing the factory bolts which included. A specialized hardened 10mm allen in a half inch drive to utilize a good sized breaker bar with, rounded the bolts. A Harbor Freight rounded bolt removal kit, didn’t work and waste of time. 10mm on my impact wrench, no dice. Finally I used a drill to completely drill through one till the head became loose enough to come out by hand. A cutoff wheel tool to flatten the edges and and hammer on a 19mm socket on. Lastly one came off with a pipe wrench with a breakover bar took one of them off. This felt like the biggest waste of time.. probably spent more time rounding up the tools, drive to buy tools, and trying tools that it took to get the engine of the Forester.

Precision drilling and many hours of your life can net you this…

Out of this have been born many techniques to foil these bolts from ruining your life. But what do you do after your finally remove them and move on with your life? You can search Youtube to see a few of the most popular removal methods. One being welding a axle nut to the head of the bolt to spin it off with a axle socket and impact gun. Another technique being a twist socket that allows you to hammer it over the outside of the bolt and impact/breaker bar it off. Many others can be searched and found, those above are among my favorites.

Another angle of this treacherous bolt. Showing the cut locations when trying to use a adjustable wrench on it.

Typical timing belt/vice grips to hold the cams in place while removing the old bolts.

That is where TIC comes in with their FU cam bolts. Instead of putting a new set of allen headed bolts back in you get these wonderful, glorious 6 pointed proper bolts to replace them with. These come in varying designs determined by which Subaru engine you have Non-avcs, Single avcs and dual avcs. What are the differences? The Avcs bolts come with holes drilled to allow the oil to be properly channeled into the cam gears allowing the variable cam tech to work its magic. Now when you install your Tic bolts you can use your trusty 17mm and torque wrench adhere them with ease.

If you order from TIC you might even get a cool dinosaur to live in your forest of Fu bolts before installing them.

I haven’t had the chance to remove the FU cam bolts but I rest easier knowing they are installed and that uninstalling them will be a breeze. I like being prepared for what situations might arise but dealing with those allen headed bolts is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy.

Hard to see but installed in all their glory!

Questions, comments, thoughts? Leave them below!

These can be found at Turn in concepts, Iag performance and may other Subaru parts stores.