That is fine, as you state, each person is entitled to their own opinion, but with so many high powered 1600CVH's on this forum we do have a fair bit of experience of what works.

I know my RST was absolutely reliable on OEM gasket and bolts and survived through the failure of each of the ancillary water hoses one at a time without taking the head gasket. That, to me is testament to the OEM setup and beggers belief why anyone running to run significantly less power than I did would want to use anything else.

The whole world believes MLS gaskets are the way, just as they believe that poly-bushes are the way for suspension too, but I happen to think they are shit also. There are applications that do well with MLS gaskets and ARP bolts, but I just don't think the CVH is one where it is needed.

I spoke to Karl a few years back about the issue with the head lifting and he discussed redrilling and fitting over-sized studs, but he was quite rightly sceptical about this, as nobody knows what it will do to the integrity of the block. I have never heard anything of this mentioned again, so either it was sucessful and they are keeping it close to their chests (understandably), or they put it down to experience. None of us have discussed in detail our tribulations with significantly passing the 350bhp mark, but I am fairly sure that we are all in the same boat and dropping out one-by-one as it is more trouble than it is worth.

Stu Collins has made roughly 350bhp, it will be interesting to see if he runs into the same problems when trying to go further. It is also interesting that the route Karl appears to have taken with Tim and Oli is an oversize taking the capacity to over 1700cc's. I have no facts to support this, but I think I'm right in saying that? Maybe this was done to give a little bit more power, without the higher cylinder pressures. Who knows.

Bottom line is, if it ain't broke, why fix it?