blue smoke on acceleration , dramatic increase

the 4 head bolt per cylinder is definitely the weak point in this design. the gasket was a generic "engine quest" brand . i didn't really assess the situation as critical as i was installing new cylinder heads and new head bolts. my normal go to would be to go with a brand name gasket . but as i recall , i got caught up in the ROCK AUTO warehouse shuffle, trying to minimize the number of warehouses to keep freight costs down. the way that i do this is usually add multiple parts to the cart and delete them according to the warehouses the come out of. i suspect this is how i ended up with these gaskets. i like your idea of leaving them overnight and retorquing.
Yep, those are definitely cheapo gaskets.