New pictures up on site ...

It was about the 11th bolt out of the 13 that twisted and broke on me. So that means that 10 of them were already at 84 pounds or so. That's about two-thirds of the way to a final torque. The material on these head gaskets is very soft. When you take the old heads off you'll notice that residual gasket material is stuck to the head and block. So, it looks like to me that the design depends on the material being compressed completely from new.

My experience fixing cars comes from repairing 100's of cars in my youth, 20+ different makes, so I learned that I don't want the car that I worked on to come back - I was just happier that way.

Anal implies that some rational thought has been left out of the evaluation process, so no I wouldn't say I'm being anal on this .... This car has bitten me at almost every step of the way in this repair. So I think I am being wise given some of the lack of quality parts used by Nissan.

Besides, why would I want to save a few bucks at this stage?!