I know I'm asking permission here for a shortcut, which is not recommended, but I'll make my question either way to gauge the response on seriousness of my actions...
Last week I opened up the valve covers to do a valve adjust. There was a top end done about 10k miles ago, and this was overdue as a second valve adjust (did one at ~1k, but got clicky again soon thereafter). There was a bit of an oil leak from the 1-3 cyl bank, and so I decided to check the head stud torque specs... sure enough the nuts/studs were about 5-10lbs shy of 23.5lbs specification. The 4-6 bank were all in spec.
Now, for the shortcut...I didn't remove the rockers to get to studs/nuts #1-8 in the head diagram for torquing order (as specified in Bruce Anderson's rebuild book), but went ahead with retorquing studs #9-18 in order and pattern recommended. This means that the outside nuts/studs are in spec but the inside 8 could be undertorqued...but the perimeter nuts/studs are tight.
Will this be problematic? Any experience on this approach?