One more opinion...

If you don't have "torque to yeild" bolts and you have and "old school" neadle deflection torque wrench then and old technique for determining if you have a bad bolt is to slowly torque the bolt to the desired value and hold it at that for a few seconds (5+?) and if the wrench continue moving then the bolt is stretching and will fail. This tehnique won't work on "click" type as well because once you rock over you have no way to tell how much force you are applying to the bolt.

Good Luck.

 

I am doing the LT4 conversion and was worried about the same thing.

In my 94 manual it just shows the step torque method, doesn't say anything about new bolts. I cleaned my threads and re try to finger thread my head bolts in and they sort of bind, so I am going w/ new bolts.

I had a gm tech friend look in a 96 manual for the LT4 specs, and they are tty bolts.

Hope this helps. I'm trying to find tty bolts to use, my old bolts were allowing the end cylinders to seep out of the gaskets.

If you don't have a torque angle meter, can you torque the bolts down, then eye ball the angle you turn them?