It was 1982 and I was in my early 20's.
I had a '63 Falcon Sprint with a hopped-up 289. I home ported my cylinder heads and had Chevy valves installed as was common in the day. It had the early small block heads that had the closed slotted holes for the pushrods. I installed the Mr Gasket screw in studs myself, just used a stack of washers and some adjusting nuts to pull out the studs, tapped the hole free hand, and screw the new studs in. Simple.
A pal and I decided to drive the Falcon to the Street Machine Nationals in Springfield Ill. We took off from my house in LA without a care in the world. We were young so we'd sleep 'till 10, have breakfast, and hit the road about noon, and drive 'till after midnight. If you're going east from the west coast it's a few days before you get to much civilization, with many hundreds of miles of open desert to travel.
Anyway, it was around midnight and we were about 30 miles from Albuquerque, New Mexico. My pal was driving and all of a sudden BANG...BANG...Bang. My friend shouted at me "What doI do?" I said as long as the car will go forward, keep driving. About 10 miles out of town we saw a motel sign and told my pal to head there. Off Highway 40 we passed a small junk yard on the way to the motel. When we got there we decided there was no urgency to find out what was wrong with the car because we were so far from home, so we got a room and some shut eye.
The next morning I pulled the plugs and valve covers. Sure enough, I had tapped an exhaust rocker stud a little crooked, and the slot in the rocker arm was sawing on the stud and finally broke it. We asked the motel clerk if there was an auto parts near by and he said about a half mile up the road. We walked there and as luck would have it there was a set of those same Mr Gasket studs hanging on the wall. Thank goodness they're the same part as a sbc uses.
We walked back to the motel and then over to the junk yard. There we found a '63 Fairlane wagon with a 260. Pulled all the rocker arms and pushrods from that motor and headed back. When we got to the Falcon, I vise gripped the broken stud out and screwed in a new one, put a "new" rocker arm and pushrod, and started 'er up. Ran fine. It became the new morning ritual of the trip, pull the valve cover and change out the rocker stud, rocker arm, and pushrod. After a full day of driving the rocker stud would be sawed into about a quarter way.
We never even thought of turning around and going home. We had made it this far and were going to the Nationals. The car ran fine the rest of the trip and we had more fun than mortals should be allowed to in Springfield.
When I got home I pulled the heads and had a machine shop install proper screwin studs and guide plates.