Ok, more like "I'll update the day after romorrow when I get home."
jgrewe leant me his shop while he and his folks rearranged it. Didn't even make me sweep up my chips after! What a guy!
I haven't liked my solution to the bolt locations for a while. The solution was to just aim the spool gun at the gap (pictured below), fill it up, then mill flats and a hole at the proper spot.
I tried it, actually kinda worked since I was using a 3D printed jig to position everything. Didn't really like the solution. Thought, thought, thought
Ordered some 1-1/4" round stock, ordered a 1-1/4" end mill, started bugging people I knew to get some shop time.
Rough measurement here.
Slap the head on the mill. Got it lined up good'nuff.
Started makin chips.
One thing I learned doing this was a lot more confidence in the crappy spool gun welder that I had been given. Might honestly need to stop calling it my "crappy spool gun welder" and just go with my "not as good as my TIG spool gun welder" Or maybe something shorter than that.
No pictures during, but cutting through it allowed me to see the penetration it achieved, the quality of 90% of the welds, real happy overall.
So, here's what I did.
Not the best, but again a whole helluva lot better than I expected for a 120V setup.
One thing this pic shows, which I was real happy with, was that the stock mounting boss thickness into the head is right at the same thickness as the round bar I chose. I initially thought 1", I thought 1-1/2", and then I played with the solidworks model of the head and some DWGs I had of the head gasket and, well, 1-1/4"
As you can see from either side of this pic, the round stock I machined is much longer than the stock bolt mounting bosses. I've got to play with en-smallening this one, making the others, and then welding everything into place. The top side mount will probably be flush, the block side will get a 1/8"-1/4" shoulder cut into it and then I'll burn it in fully.
So that was my day!
Gotta say, car sure handles different with ~150lbs of pig iron and GM's Finest* Castings in the trunk!