What about loosing the heat treatment from getting them hot while grinding them down

Mark,
Appreciate the offer but I'm thinking these are exactly the same bolts I am using.

1) crank to flexplate - ARP 200-2903, 7/16"

2) flexplate to converter - ARP 240-7302, 7/16"

when I got an ATI treemaster years ago that's all that came with it, except done in a lathe. Changing heat treat would take getting it to a dull cherry red. that ain't happening on a bench grinder. Well I guess it could but you know what I mean.

Yes, hopefully common sense comes into play.

This seems to be more common with 8-bolt cranks...bolt heads will actually leave noticeable witness marks in the converter.

how do the ARP converter bolt heads, the 12 point style, work out on the 8 bolt cranks ?

The bigger (7/16) converter bolts won't work on the 8 bolt cranks that take the 1/2 inch fine thread flywheel, flex plate bolts on those cranks

Moparx , When I built my new combo I wanted to use ARP on flexplate , so I bought ARP , for whatever reason they only came in 6pc packages . Yep , had to buy 2 to get the job done with a couple extra in the box . No wonder they are expensive , you need to buy more than you need . Gary

PS:They do work without issues .

Every time I've seen a change of colors on bolts being ground on did make a change on the heat treat, I'm not sure it that made them softer or harder
Hard bolts break easier before twisting a tiny bit than the softer bolts due

Just a light mist of water and taking your time grinding will prevent any discoloring. Not at all hard to do. Besides, any discoloring would be limited to the surface of the bolt head unless common sense was absent. The vast majority of the bolt wouldn't be affected. Especially if water was used to prevent the heat build up in the first place.

Honestly, Cab, this isn't that hard or risky.

And if prefer softer bolts, just buy Grade 5 rather than 8. Of course, you don't have that choice with ARP.

On 440 Source, 6 crank to flex plate bolts are about $19 plus shipping. If you need 8,that would be over $5 a bolt. Five dollars would buy just about all 8 at your local hardware store. In either Grade 8 or 5.

Just putting all choices into perspective.

i know exactly what you mean, as i did the same thing.
as i haven't put this combo together yet, i was wondering if there would be any issues with the ARP bolts.
thanks for the info. just one more thing i don't have to worry about.

So here are a couple more pics that (at least for this particular bolt I checked - and I did NOT check all six of them) clearly indicate there is plenty of clearance between the crank-to-flexplate bolt and the face of the converter. The white sheet is a folder piece of paper stuck between the head of the bolt and the converter body. The 2nd picture shows a much thicker cardboard sheet that still fits quite fine.

Alright, so having said that all I came to discover that as I tightened the remaining motor-to-transmission case bolts, the clearance did actually end up pulling in, which is not something I anticipated, and let me explain what I mean by that.

The initial checks were done with the FOUR top bolts (small block) fully seated. However, as this appeared to be an issue and as I troubleshooted further I noticed that at the very edges where the locating dowels are there was still a bit of clearance, maybe 0.010"??? (I did not measure)

Subsequently once I added the two edge bolts and fully tighteneded ALL of them, it now appeared to almost completely close out the gap I had originally found. Mind you, it was not completely gone, but I would say down to about 0.025" (which I tried to measure with my gap blades, not quite handy getting one in there, but that's the closest I came to getting a good check).

Therefore - and this may be obvious to all of you who have done this countless times - the lesson I learned here is that ALL the engine-to-transmission case bolts must all be installed before anything else can be checked!

Honestly I feel a bit like an idiot to have missed this (I think this was a 'miss'). Thanks everyone for the feedback and troublshooting suggestions though as this allowed me to work through the issue!

Now off I got to fire-up the motor...keeping my fingers crossed we do not get rained out like yesterday!!!