We put the girdle on my buddy's VE+T we built. I think it's really worth it, personally. I don't think we put the 8cw crank in, but it's been a couple of year, so I don't remember exactly. With the girdle, and lots of abuse that car is still going strong! The GTi-R T28 is starting to show some signs of abuse (smokes a very little bit occasionally), but it did get pulled from a GTi-R engine that had a piston basically just spider and crumble inside the block. It was nasty...
We've got another friend that is slowly modifying the ITB's from that GTi-R to fit his NA VE. They might not be ideal, but he's really excited to see how it will respond.