Head gasket woes

aaronk785 said
Hopefully you weren’t pulling threads when torquing.

Dale Davies said
Were you using the ARP thread lubricant? Did ARP suggest bring to torque two or three times before final torque? This burnished any rough spots off the threads, allowing smooth torque.

ARP lubricant was used and the heads were torqued in three steps. Threads are clean too.