That was always my question on the functionality of girdles. How solid can they be when sandwiched in between gaskets? I always felt that a girdle should be "glued" to the rail, but fastened directly with flush mount tapered locating bolts in an alternate pattern of the pan gasket, so that the girdle isn't dependent on being held in place by a compressible gasket/ hardware.
there is no gasket between the girdle and the block on my BCR kit, I used a very light coat of grey silicon between the girdle and pan rail, all the perimeter bolts are studs and the nut's are counter sunk into the girdle, then there is the pan gasket and pan over top of those nut's and that is held in place by another set of nut's on the exsisting pan rail stud's, you can drop the pan and never disturb the girdle, nice well thought out system in my opinion.
