Thanks for the advice and input, Ted. I'd started putting pieces together and figured I'd be good to go with just about whatever I decided. I settled on some Clevites...not only because of materials and reputation, but gee...I could get them the next day. I'll be picking them up this afternoon. Finally found some at a machine shop 30 miles from mi casa. And! the guy is easy to deal with. Not that there aren't other sources just as easy, but ease of transaction speeds things up.

Anyway, to piggy back on my own little thread...
I found some delamination (the metal ring around the hole for cylinder #1 right near a water jacket hole) happening on the headgasket...original from factory....that appears to be from the head crawling around. I read on 4crawler's page a while back about him having installed studs for the head as opposed to bolts. Would studs...or anything else...minimize this kind of thing from happening? Also, at Yotatech, someone had quoted a procedure you'd shared for torquing down the head. It was more detailed and a bit different from the FSM procedure. I'd like to follow that advice you gave, but I can't seem to find it in a search over there. It was quote from a thread by someone other than you had started and I don't remember the subject title nor the author. Does this ring a bell at all? I'll keep trying to find it, but so far my keywords turn up alot of other things I'm not looking for.