Finally got back to this project...for a bit anyway...work is making playtime difficult to find recently...
When I took my motor apart a few months ago, as part of the annual inspection, I was looking for some valvetrain noise that was getting noisy to the point of bothering me. It was noise that had not existed until recently. To make a long story short - what I finally found was worn rocker arm bushings on two rocker arms. One bushing on each rocker arm had significant wear (over .010 out of round) - only on the valve spring end of each rocker arm. These were SE roller rocker arms. Everything else looked fine... I am confident this was the source of the noise I was looking for..
But, since I like projects, especially winter projects, I kept going and pulled the entire top end apart...heads, cylinders, pistons...everything. Everything looked fine - cylinders and pistons were good - heads looked good.
Once apart - I decided to do a 2nd build similiar to my first - and so I have created a new project.
I decided to rebuild the motor again - simply as a fun project - utilizing Dave Mackie. I sent my cylinders, pistons, throttle body and a set of heads to Dave and asked him to inspect everything - got the results of his inspection - and started making decisions.
The cylinders were no longer quite as straight and round as I would like, so Dave took them .005 over to clean them up. And Dave ordered me a set of .005 over JE 10.5 to 1 pistons - built to his specifications. He cc'd, ported, polished and flowed a set of 110 heads for me. He matched the heads to my throttle body. And we decided to use his TC598 cams. These cams work well at 10.5 to 1, but do not create huge cylinder pressure because they have a later closing exhaust.
Along with the parts Dave supplied, I will use S&S lifters, SE tapered pushrods, SE roller rocker arms, my existing Feuling camplate and Feuling Race Oil pump.
Here are a few pictures of the heads Dave supplied. The intake port work is interesting. He provides a couple of different surface finishes with the intake porting, intended to better atomize the fuel particles as they pass thru the port. He polishes the exhaust ports and combustion chambers. Nice appearing work...it will be interesting to see if they perform as nice as they look...