Your build is looking good! You are also assembling a nice set of building tools. Two things to consider. First get a timing tape for the diameter of balancer that you have. Those stamped degrees will 'Disappear' when your motor gets a little dirty. Even if you keep your motor spotlessly clean, there will times when it's a little dirty and you need to put a light on it. The second thing is to get 3-4 long carbide burrs and a harbor freight die grinder (1/4 inch stuff, not Dremel). You can watch David Vizzard videos and learn a lot about porting, port matching and bowl work. You will be able to make junkyard heads Good and good heads Incredible! Swapout porting work for speed parts with your friends. If they aren't your friends, learn what to look for damaged on second hand parts. Or just charge cash. Be careful though, people will bring you every kind of broken/defective parts to trade! And the larger the arew, the worse it is! With careful shopping, you could have gotten the basics to start porting heads for what it cost you for the gasket matching. The reason I bring up porting is the cylinder heads that you are going to be running. The Amazon/Ebay aluminum heads are very cheap by themselves. I consider them building blocks for the price of cores. As you accumulate various head parts(like the springs from this build) you can buy a set of cheap aluminum heads, port and gasket match them and finally assemble them with extra new and Good used parts on hand. That 400 dollar pair of heads can leave your shop for 1000+ that will give you 'Hobby money' and give the buyer a deal at the same time. I don't want to be discouraging but the CNC ported AFR base heads would have probably given you 75 to 100 horsepower over the set from Amazon. They will also maintain their resale value. A really great porting job on the generic heads would easily get you 65+ of those horsepower back. The single biggest, most important place to get horsepower is the cylinder heads. The better they flow, the more HP. If you find a decent motor in a junkyard, a ring, bearings and gasket set can get it going. A timing set and oil pump are cheap insurance. You can port the factory heads and have them milled to increase static compression and have a Bad-azz, but inexpensive motor! You can put a bigger camshaft in it, but a lot of times you can get enough lift off of 1.7 ratio rockers and such. You can also consider a Can regrinder and get a cheap cam upgrade. I have a number of used engines, heads and components around and I am porting a set of 89 5.0 Ford GT heads for a friends 351 Windsor build. The valves are really too small but I'm going with larger valves from a set of Chevy Vortec heads. You'll be amazed at the HP you can make with very few of the Pretty and Fancy boxes laying around. It all comes with experience. Nice Video! Ya'll Take Care and great to see young people join the Hobby! -John

Great short vid on the pointer install. Thanks!

RTV won’t stick to paint. Couldn’t see if you scraped the paint off the timing cover flange on the block ……but you should have.

Did you get 383 done Happy new year 12/28/2023

you could have used a Cloyes timing cover with the built-in cam button....and eliminate all the problems you had...