With regards to your stripped intake bolt, that was one of my problems during assembly... I had to come up with a solution.
All the bolt kits out there seem to be designed around cast iron heads, where they don't need to go as deep into the heads because they're grabbing iron. I solved my problem by "inventing" a set of stainless steel intake studs. No one else had made a set. I bought some hardened stainless steel all-thread from a local fastener supplier. I went to work measuring, cutting, chamfering and hack-sawing a slot in one end for a screwdriver install. You can run them down, all the way to the hole's bottom. That utilizes ALL the threads, not just 50% or so of them. Since then I've NEVER had another stripped hole or leaking gasket. They torque down very solid now. In addition, they make it real easy to bolt down other items like throttle linkages, halon fire extinguishing lines etc.
I also ended up helicoiling the stripped 3 hole, utilizing their 1" long helicoils.
