I posted my head gasket debarckle a few weeks back. So the standard old style block head gave in with corroded water galleries. I had a H89 head that was said to be soft. Against all good advice I have gone ahead and put it on anyway as it was the best of all heads that I had being recently rebuilt. My thinking was that the head bolts are quite close together on an A series head. It was mainly soft around the middle exhaust ports. A bit of research showed my I could torque to 54ft/lb with the later model head bolts. I drilled and ground an oil gallery into the H89. Re- assembled today with a Mono-torque gasket. When I tensioned the bolt above the soft spot it didn't seem different from any of the other bolts. So I know this might seem a bit dodgy but for the sake of a $30 gasket and a couple of hours I'm not bothered much. More of an experiment. So will check the torque settings after a few hundred k's. I've done about 100k's so far. Hit 160k's pretty easy, I backed off then. Rev's pretty happy to about 6500rpm in the low gears. So will keep yall posted. Just thought some of you may be interested. Cheers

Good on ya. Let us know how it works out.