It's done and running. Pics later.

Only three issues

First, I drove to my buddies work to show him and when I walked out with him there was a lake of coolant... I never tightened the hose clamp on the lower radiator hose :insertfacepalm

Second, lake of oil... The aftermarket lower pan I bought had these dips around the edge and I didn't load one with enough RTV. It's good now lol.

Third........... and the one that's going to **** me off the most........... There's a tick, and it's loud. My first two guesses were valvetrain or exhaust. So I tightened up the manifolds which were already crazy tight, and nothing. So last night I took apart the valvetrain and everything looked fine. Pretty dang good actually. I found a few things I needed to sort of provide some TLC for but nothing crazy, so I carefully and correctly re-installed the rocker assembly and the valve cover.

Since I was at a loss, I decided again to try and listen with a screwdriver to my ear over everything. The only thing that popped out was injector 8 was ticking at the same rate as the loud tick... Good and bad. Good, because it's easy to check and fix. Bad, because it means cylinder 8 is running lean. In a little while when I go home I'll run the test to see if it's the problem or not.

Overall for other people interested, looking at the full date from when I got the car to now, remember that I had A LOT of motor work to do. A full time job. A wife. Kids.... I went from a put together V8 on my engine stand to a running V8 in the car in less than 24 hours... By myself. With wiring. With a broken index finger because I dropped the motor on it.

I was out of my area of comfortability with the motor work since I'd never torn one down that far. That being said, next time I'm going to take the 20 days and just send it back lol.