A few months ago, I did a headgasket replacement on my n/a sedan. Followed the instructions to the letter, including exact bolt tightening sequence & torque specs + 90 degrees. New headbolts, new re-surfaced head, the whole deal. It's been running great, and I've been checking every couple of days for coolant/oil leaks just in case, and there hasn't been a drop - until yesterday...

Well, yesterday I noticed a lot of oil on my filter, dripping directly from the headgasket under bolt #3 (at least, #3 in the tightening sequence, it's directly over the filter and sits in the oil supply path to the head). I'd heard that sometimes this can be under-torqued since it sits in so much oil, and had double-checked this when doing the job. But sure enough, I popped the valve cover yesterday, and found this bolt to be very under the torque of the others.

Not wanting to loosen anything up for fear of unseating the gasket, I re-tightened all the bolts, following the correct sequence again. It looks like they were all pretty much at 100 ft-lbs (I guess this is the result of the angle-tightening from the initial job) so I tightened them up a bit more; they were quite shockingly pretty easy to turn! But I couldn't get #3 to quite match the torque of the others; it certainly doesn't spin freely or anything, but it will keep turning with a lot of resistance, and the wrench won't click at 100 like it does with the other bolts.

No wanting to go too far and trash the gasket or snap a bolt, I just left it at its tightest point, which is probably just (by feel) a couple of ft-lbs. under the others. No apparent oil leaks now. But my question is (and sorry for the long post, btw!): anyone else had a similar experience, and how much time do you think I have on this gasket now? Is it possible that the threads on #3 are somehow looser or stripped in the block? In which case, I think it's time for me to throw in the towel on this particular brick....

Thanks for any thoughts...