My crank snout had some serious wear on it. I'm assuming from about a year ago when I found the balancer bolt loose. I never noticed it when I swapped to the SFI balancer because the wear was inside the front cover. So off to finding a crank - and finding a used 58 tooth crank that doesn't need to be cut has turned fruitless. I had access to a couple iffy ones, so my machine shop picked a winner and is cutting one to .010" under. Finding the crank bolt loose prompted the purchase of a flywheel lock :
This ^^^ thing works. And it makes getting the additional 140 degrees easy with 3-4' of cheater pipe on a breaker bar, just don't try it on a budget engine stand
$240 additional for cutting the crank and another $240 in H bearings. The block at .030 over with new cam bearings - $550, balancing rotating assembly - $250. OUCH, but....poop happens. I can't complain really for the work being done.
I just found these head gaskets. I believe that Tooley just got these made for them as I've never been able to find these anywhere.
https://briantooleyracing.com/btr-s...-055-thickness-sold-in-pairs-btr973010-2.html
These should help with a couple of things over the LS9 head gaskets I was running. 1st, a minor bump in compression of .1, and 2nd - help from putting any of the burn between the head and deck surface due to the smaller bore diameter. These have a 3.940 diameter as opposed to the 4.100 of the LS9. It doesn't seem like much, but every little bit is something. I keep a set of the BTR 7 layer LS9 head gaskets 'in stock' in my garage. Thankfully the 6.0 project I've been working on is the perfect home for the larger bore LS9's.