OP here - thanks everyone for offering your ideas. I get that we all have different life experiences, and different opinions, and different ideas. What I love about this forum is that people are willing to share what they have learned. There will be different ideas - and conflicting ideas - but for a newbie like me, I like to gather all the different opinions, and then make up my mind of what to do. I've done more work on this old truck in this last year than I have for the previous 20 - thanks to all of you. This forum is great - I support it with donations - keep it going.
So - back to my original question I've got an old moderately rusted head as a possible replacement for the cracked head in my truck. - the valves were rusted solid in the guides - I broke two guides getting the valves out. Maybe this head is not worth trying to save - here is a photo before I started trying to clean it up. I read somewhere - maybe not on this forum - that if a shop is not experienced in working with old cast iron heads, they will press the guides out and crack the head.
Is that a real concern, or is that one of those modern myths. Has anyone actually had a head ruined by a well meaning, but inexperienced shop ?
