Gear-heads Are Thugs

Quoting my friend Jon as he mocked my low-budget approach to building a performance engine; referring to my experience of buying a pair of "almost-new" cylinder heads from a private party online.  Jon's point was that you can't trust random gearheads to sell you goods sight unseen.  I guess he was right.  The seller forgot to mention one of the heads had a dent on the combustion side edge (you can see the dented edge in the photo below.)

Oh well, lesson learned.  I hit up my friend Jay and posted a few photos on forums and pretty much got the same advice. The dent is no big deal because of it's size and location. Just file it and it should be fine. I'll take it to my machine shop (Automotive Parts & Machine in Fredrick, MD) for a final opinion before I actually start file it though.

The story on my Ford Racing Z304 High Flow Aluminum Heads: the guy I bought them from tried to custom machine the pushrod guide plates to make them almost as wide as the guide holes in the heads, which defeats the purpose of the plates. Anyhow, he must have dented the head and just gave up all together. Once I file down the dent and purchase new pushrod guide plates ($40) I should still save around $160 on these heads.  Not bad.