[lust4speed]

As far as not loosening or loosening head bolts, I think the phrase "an object at rest tends to stay at rest" can be tweaked a little to apply here. In the real world, a head bolt will resist moving until the torque load is considerably higher than the actual load. A bolt might be at 85 foot pounds, but won't move when 100 foot pounds is applied - and therefore the bolt is left under torqued. By loosening the bolt and taking a clean run, the actual torque will be re-set to 100 foot pounds. This has happened to me even when using of ARP's Ultra Torque after engine break-in. Just one of those facts of life that can either be accepted or rejected.

I have never had a gasket leak from head bolts not being retorqued, but I loosen and set them again before the engine comes off the engine stand.

I've seen blocks that looked like they've been decked with a belt sander and the head gaskets didn't leak. Long head bolts could be the culprit, but I'll throw another possibility out. Are these Felpro gaskets the normal blue color, or could they possibly be the black with orange Printoseal? I ask because we had two engines using the black gaskets leak the same way. After taking things apart we found that the fire rings were .012" thicker than the remainder of the gasket - and this was after torquing things down and then tightening things up again. The rings were holding the head far enough away from the block that the coolant leaked out. I always wondered how many more bad gaskets were out there.