How tight should they be? My manual conveniently left out this info. I torqued the fronts up to 20 ft lbs. Is that enough?

 

I'd say thats fine. Just good and snug as they have lockwashers. It's not in the FSM?

 

It is not a specified torque in the FSM. So you flip to the back of the book and look under the "Unless otherwise specified" torque chart. Once you know the bolts are grade 6 and 12mm you get the torque range 41-59 ft-lb.

Though this is mostlikely correct, I would recommend calling up the people you bought your engine parts from and asking them to verify it.

 

17 ft-lb is the correct rating for those. These are not grade 6 bolts. SAE bolts have grades 2, 5 etc. to indicate strength not metric ones. They are rated differently. They are equivalent to sae grade 2 so you better not exceed 25 ft-lb.

 

Thanks everyone! I'm considering loosening them and retorqueing to 17, but I'm not sure if that's necessary. A couple of the bolts felt like they were just starting to not want to torque any further without twisting a little. I suspect it's ok to retorque them now and not risk a bolt failure down the road. Like you said, they've got lock washers so they won't come loose by themselves.

I found this at the repuguru's webpage. The bottom of the first page has torque specs for the REPU. The second page has the "Unless otherwise specified" section.
http://www.geocities.com/repuguru/specs6.html
http://www.geocities.com/repuguru/Specs7.html
I'm guessing the later engines had similar specs?

 

By "grade 6" I meant it has the number 6 on the head of the bolt. And my personal fastener opinion is that these bolts could easily take their non-specified torque.