For my goals of a hotstreet engine the only mystery area that still gets me is the pushrod pinch. When I port my own heads Im just cleaning up the as cast ports and bowls. No hogging out or re engineering the design- just removing all those lumps clumps barbs and slag. I do not remove valve guide structure but I do contour, round off and teardrop the VGs. But the pushrod area gets tricky. I don't have a Helgeson E tool. The last LA heads I did I removed .030 of the pushrod pinch and called it good. For my new EQ Magnum heads I did buy some calipers that will give me a measurement of wall thickness along the pushrod provision.
