This has annoyed me for years, and I never came up with a way to take care of it or asked before...

Has anyone developed a method to cool the hot spot in the center of the head and/or center of the deck surface?

Right between 4 and 6, and between 3 and 5.

Other than relocating the ports....any known tricks, etc?

Last night I started tearing down the 440 that I ran in the GTX for like 14 years, and it's just like every other B-RB motor I have ever worked on.....right in the middle of the deck surface, there are signs of heat and a possible small amount of head gasket movement.

This is an 8.8:1 484 purple shaft engine, and it isn't like it was highly stressed. I used steel shim head gaskets and copper coat the last time I had the heads off....the copper coat is still there all around the deck surface, but right in the middle it's blackened and there are definite signs of the head gasket moving around.

It didn't leak that I could detect, but leakage between cylinders only when running can be difficult to find.

Every one I have worked on did not look as nice as I would like in that one spot....stock, modified, my engines, other peoples engines, composite gaskets, steel shim gaskets, does not seem to matter....gaskets don't like the heat from the two center exhaust ports. It always changes color in that spot.

I've never used mls other than gen 3 hemis, not sure if those gaskets will take the heat better? But it seems to me it would be preferable to cool the metal off somehow....