Gah, still waiting on head studs. I like the company I bought it from, but I still show no shipping (Beefcake Racing). They did right by me last time (hooked me up with an upgraded balancer when MMR hosed them on inventory) so I'm sure it's not their fault (they are MMR head studs). I'll shoot them an email tomorrow and see if they have an ETA.
I did get everything else basically ready. I pulled all of the bolts out of the intake manifold anti-crush sleeves, cleaned them and painted them and put in stainless bolts. Put all stainless bolts in the oil pan (and bought a Mustang pan gasket which has an integrated windage tray!), TIG'd a bung onto the pan (man I love that TIG machine!), knocked out the dent from shipping that was at the front of the pickup "divot" in the pan, painted the pan, and reinstalled it. I also installed the cleaned up alternator and A/C compressor to make sure they fit/look proper. All good there so far.
I removed the pop in seals for the valve cover bolts (they're a lot like LS1 perimeter bolt seals), cleaned them up and reinstalled them with stainless bolts as well. FWIW I was going to just buy a hardware kit for the motor from Ford, but they only offered a 100% kit, of which I only needed half, and still didn't include valve cover or intake manifold bolts. So I took every bolt out, measured them and ordered from McMaster Carr. I used 18-8 stainless for all of the low load areas (intake manifold, valve covers, oil pan, front cover (it has like 12 M8 bolts, it's not going anywhere), then bought 10.9 black oxide bolts for the alternator and A/C compressor mounting bolts (and the engine mounts, which are standard on the chassis side, because 1965).
Once the head studs come in, I'll pull everything back off (it's all bolted up for mockup right now), put in the new gaskets/studs, then reinstall/time the cams, and final install it all. I have all new gaskets for everything. I also have the -10 conversions for the heater hoses in place (need to seal them to the block/water pump still) and the fuel rails on.
Oh, and I had a couple areas where the steering shaft runs very close to the block and the "wide" areas where the set screws lock the steering u joints in were within 1/8" of the block or turbo compressor. I mocked that all up, torqued the set screws then pulled it apart and TIG'd it together, so no more set screws needed. It's 3/4" DD shaft and Flaming River forged, low profile rebuildable u joints. So the nice thing is the TIG welds only have to retain the DD shaft in place. That said I fully welded them, so you can probably hang the car from the joints and it won't go anywhere. Steering seems important, so. At any rate, that will give me even more clearance.
Finally, I went ahead and TIG'd the other "up pipe" to the exhaust manifold. Since I modified these manifolds to fit the up pipe flanges, there wasn't a lot of good options for gaskets and without sending it to have it machine ground true, it would be a stretch to use gasket maker in place, and I don't like graphite gaskets pre-turbo since they tend to blow out. Since the manifold is bolted first (and fully torqued) to the up pipe, THEN TIG'd, the TIG is there mostly to seal it up. I pre-heated everything to 400*, then did two passes with stainless wire, making sure to flow it all out pretty wide on the second pass. I cooled it slowly (hit it with the torch for a bit as it cooled, every few minutes. I waited a day, hit it with the ballpeen a bit and then inspected it. I cannot visually find any cracks, so it seems to be alright. FWIW they were brand new cast manifolds from Ford and brand new stainless flanges, so I'm sure that helped. They actually welded pretty nicely, it flowed about like the stainless did. I then TIG'd the bolts into place (fully welded the heads and the end of the bolt where it came through the manifold). I have them mocked up on the engine with the Stage 8 stainless fasteners now.
Once ALL of this crap is done I think I'll be pretty happy with the engine, appearance and build wise. I need to TIG a cracked bracket back onto the transmission (where the driver side shifter support sits) and then it's ready.
Ah, yes. I modified my shifter to fit the chassis right. And now it's in the way of the driveshaft because of the stupid flanged output on the TR6060. I can't find a way to convert the TR6060, so I think I'm going to buy an MGW shifter for it, as that raises it up a bit. It also moves it back a bit more than 2" from my current location, so I have to see what that does to my parking brake and transmission tunnel. This will be shifter number 3. Yay.
