Well to be perfectly honest, when I lost the one stud, I put loc-tite on the stock bolt. So when I removed it to put in the replacement ARP stud, the stud simply would not go in.
I eventually stripped a good portion of the threads in the block. I then had to buy a tap and clean it up, and I just kept trying to work out the loctite with a combination of cleaners and such. Took a long while, but eventually got the stud completely seated. I've always been worried it would come back out and I'd have to learn how to use a helicoil, but it's held for almost a year now, which is longer than they've ever all stayed tight before. I still hear a faint exhaust leak "tick" right at startup every now and then, but it's definitely not the manifold anymore. I've tried getting my wife to quickly blip the throttle while I hunt for it, but she's not too good at the blipping part and the leak was gone before I could find it.
If I do hear it, it is always gone within a few seconds of driving, so I probably shouldn't even let it bother me. I did do a thorough inspection under the car, and after staring the downpipe and exhaust down for 30 minutes or so, it didn't make a peep for at almost three weeks. So apparently, it can be threatened away by staring at it.
One of a few reasons why your Edelbrock experiment interests me.