Good on you Scott! I had plans to build a killer 261 but then bought a C5 Corvette and lost interest in making more power with my truck
.Anyway a few things I can share are:
1. You can find 50-52 powerglide intake valves (and guides) locally from Gary auto, ABS engines, etc.
2. The picture of your last block is 55-57 variety. Canadian 58-62 blocks have the boss for the diverter pin/large pipe thread but it is only machined for the small NPT.
See here.3. You are welcome to borrow my
torque plate. Boring cylinders with it mounted in place of the head will make for rounder holes/faster ring seating.
4. As for the head I made a flow bench adapter plate and tested several modifications. The exhaust valves are severely shrouded so removing some material where the valve comes close to the wall will help.
See here.5. Don't ream/enlarge the intake ports from the manifold side to the intersection. This was shown to reduce incoming velocity and did more harm than good. Frank McGurk did it in a hop up article but I assume his other mods "masked" what a flowbench proved detrimental.
6. We'll chew the fat over a few beers sometime to get into further details.
